Sometimes you feel out of place, but being in the middle is not a loss. It’s the point from where you can see two worlds, while others see only one. I feel I’m a crescent that doesn’t need to become sun to shine. 

These were the words of Tamara Al Zool, the 23 years old who goes by her art name TÄRA. She has reached millions of Italians through the mainstream TV-program Le Iene in May with a monologue on identity that soon became viral on social media. 

A week later, her debut EP “Zefiro” went out on a date that could not be more important for her: May 15, the day of the Nakba, a day and a history she has always known from her parents and grandparents who lived it. Today, touring Italy and Europe with concerts and events, she is taking on the Italian music scene with a style that, according to Rolling Stone MENA, “Italy has no category for”. 

To learn more about her artistic journey, UntoldMag sat with TÄRA for an exclusive interview. 

 

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Born in Italy to Palestinian parents, TÄRA is making waves with her own genre. She calls it Arab&B, a new type of R&B where she mixes Arabic, English, Italian (and at times also French) in such a natural way that one would not imagine that at one point in her life, she had challenges in feeling her identity.  It would not seem so either when, two years ago, at her very first appearance on TV for the music program X Factor Italia, she made it very clear why she was there: “I came to X-factor to represent, to be a voice”, she said, wearing a keffiyeh as she performed Ariana Grande’s song 7 Rings with some parts reinterpreted in Arabic. 

Palestine – and all that comes with it, from the ongoing genocide to resistance and memory –, the Arabic speaking world, and the Mediterranean as a whole are constant themes in her songs, through which the listener can soon appreciate that TÄRA makes music with universal messages. Like in “Diaspora”, which draws a line between the Palestinians expelled from their land and the Southern Italians who leave their homes behind out of necessity. 

In the “Petra” music video, shot in Tunis, within 3 minutes the music takes the listener through a romantic journey from Maghreb to Mashreq. Not to mention her rendition of Ya Helwa Ciao, her Arabic rendition of Bella Ciao, the song adopted by the Italian Resistance calling for freedom and an end to fascism, so popular among Palestinians (and generally among minorities fighting for their rights). 

Stefano Nanni: Identity is a recurrent topic in your songs. But who is TÄRA before and after becoming the artist, and has that helped in affirming your own identity?

TÄRA: The beauty of all that I’m living is that before, during and after, it’s always me. I can definitely say that my public persona is not a ‘character’ but genuinely who I am, expressing my values without fear. 

It has not always been easy to belong to different worlds at the same time, but I learned with time that being in the middle is an additional perspective rather than a deficiency. And I think I grew in awareness and courage to translate my innate self into art. Being able to represent all these middle lands is certainly not an easy task, but it’s like my whole world is made of many different points of view. 

For example, in the song “Petra” we chose Tunisia as a destination because it perfectly encompasses my multifaceted world, highlighting the beautiful similarities among seemingly different cultures and transcending societal divisions.

SN: Still on identity, in the very powerful music video “Beauty standards”, you seem to affirm something also about the type of aesthetic you want to embrace. 

T: With this EP I am going through a whole journey, including certain beauty standards because it is a theme that I have personally experienced, having felt ‘not beautiful enough’ according to certain norms imposed by society. 

I am sure many other girls have experienced and continue to experience this type of ‘discomfort’ – that’s what I call it. With that video I wanted to represent, through a short monologue, how the beauty you have today, even if it may not conform to mainstream models represented by the media, actually carries history and tradition. 

It is important to acknowledge and remember that the people before you have fought to make you be here, so you have to bring these unique features, with pride, not shame.

SN: Do you feel somehow that your music is able to represent people who often had no one to identify with? And can it contribute to more unity?

T: Let’s say that my goal is precisely to represent those often unrepresented: The too many Italians with foreign roots caught in the middle like me. If in my own small way, my music succeeded in attracting even two or three persons who feel I am doing something positive for them, then I am very happy and I hope it will go even better. 

I don’t want to sound too utopian, but it would be nice to get to a point where we don’t even have to make all these divisions among all of us anymore, and then be able to live in unity simply as human beings. I have a strong desire for my music to foster unity among all people, dreaming a world without such divisions, where cultural beauty is celebrated by all humans. I hope that my art will play a role in all this.

SN: How are you handling success? Did your direct relations with fans change by becoming so popular? 

T: When it comes to my relationship with fans I think it is even improving, as I continue to live the direct connection with them through social media, receiving immense support and love. I think it is a very beautiful way of living this experience. 

At the same time, it is obvious that social media can be a double-edged sword, as the toxicity of certain users brings also a lot of negativity. Sometimes it’s hard to confront that, especially hate speech and comments about Palestine, but I am learning to use indifference as a more effective strategy, because in the end, those who want to hate stick to anything in front of them.

Generally, about success, I think I’m living a fairly quiet relationship with it, actually. I see it as a means, I have the privilege to access a wide audience, to share the messages I want to transmit, especially about Palestine and the genocide we’re still suffering. So why not do it? Indeed, in certain places like on mainstream TV there seem to be certain rules about not talking about certain topics, but I am approaching them, as much as possible, with my naturalness and my identity, without hiding anything. 

SN: On the power to use popularity to take a stance, recently in Italy there were some controversies about the words of Francesco De Gregori, a very popular singer, who said that he “feels embarrassed when an artist takes a political position”. What do you think of that?

T: I have honestly not read what he said, and I don’t want to decontextualize his words, but my opinion is a totally different one: I want my art to give a voice to the voiceless and to minorities. 

As an artist, I believe I have the power and responsibility to educate younger generations and empower those who might otherwise feel silenced. I don’t want to live in a world where somebody grows up fearing that exposing themself is something that leads them to something negative. I don’t want that, I want something different.

The post Giving Italy a Sound It Has No Category For: An Interview with Palestinian-Italian Singer TÄRA appeared first on Untold.

Known otherwise as the Flamingo Revolution, the massive civic participation has articulated five non-negotiable demands, starting with the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama together with his entire cabinet. The consistency, the novelty in the forms of political articulation, and the ever-growing scale have drawn worldwide attention and coverage in major international media.

The information that Kushner and Trump are behind the interventions in these protected areas, coupled with the deprivation of the local population’s right to common property, reeks of patterns of settler colonialism fused with venture capitalism: the privatisation of land and resources by outside capital, backed by political power, at the expense of those who have long depended on them. 

Criticism of the Albanian government for subordinating itself to a colonial order in order to gain international legitimacy while intensifying oppressive local practices is mounting steadily and has surfaced repeatedly throughout this protest. The protest has drawn together thousands of citizens, activists and environmental organizations, local communities, activists from human rights groups, as well as pro-Palestinian activists and collectives in Albania. 

“I left the barbed wire in occupied Palestine, and I found it in Zvërnec. A week ago, I left the executioners in occupied Palestine and found them in Zvërnec. Edi Rama is not the Prime Minister of Albania, he is Israel’s governor in Albania… That the fence will be removed, there is no doubt. That the project will be cancelled, there is no doubt. What we demand is resignation!”

These were the words by Baki Goxhaj at the 1st of June protest against the ecocidal project in Pishë Poro-Nartë, delivered no more than two weeks after he returned from the Global Sumud Flotilla mission towards Gaza. 

Baki touched the hearts of Albanian-speaking communities everywhere when he participated in the mission in May this year. Israeli military forces intercepted his vessel and detained him for three and a half days. Shaken by the violence he experienced and witnessed against his companions, he affirmed publicly that they have been subjected to ‘extreme violence’ and ‘torture practices’. 

Baki has followed the Palestinian cause for over 15 years. However, the fact that all of Albania’s political, intellectual and cultural elites, who are tied to Rama’s power, have aligned themselves with Israel and condemned Palestinian resistance following the events of 7 October 2023 marked a turning point in his political engagement in the public sphere. 

As an activist of the Palestina e Lirë (Free Palestine Collective), he has been involved in a number of initiatives since 2023. These include drafting the petition ‘Not in My Name’, which was signed by over 6,500 people in opposition to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama being awarded the presidential medal of honour by Israeli President Isaac Herzog in 2024. He has also filed a criminal complaint against Chief Rabbi Joel Kaplan for participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

Locally, he has been working alongside his partner Eriselda Balliu in the coastal city of Vlorë. He has also created the ‘themulsimvote‘ platform to help Muslim voters make more informed decisions in primary elections (2025) and vote against parties that support genocide.

Connected Struggles

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has mobilized many cities across Europe, including Southeastern Europe. Nevertheless, with the exception of Slovenia, almost no official statements condemning this genocide were made from governments of this region. 

Dissent and solidarity in Albania, Kosovo and Albanian diaspora, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia,  Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria came from citizen protesters, activists, collectives, and religious communities. Political articulations were expressed through protests, marches, student encampments and actions in support of the BDS movement and the Global Sumud Flotilla. Demands included a ceasefire, an immediate halt to the genocide, accountability for genocidal acts, the arrest of Netanyahu, sanctions, the termination of economic agreements with Israel and boycotts of artistic, cultural and sporting organisations. 

There was also a call for an end to double standards in relation to both Ukraine and Palestine and for respect for international law. In Albania, the government’s strong alignment with Israel, which occurred alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza, provoked revolt and waves of anger and indignation among Albanian citizens. Despite political challenges, this created fertile ground for the Palestine solidarity movement in Albania. 

The Rama government’s alignment with Israel has prompted many activists to engage in more intense solidarity with Palestine. Dorela Binjaku, a feminist activist and member of the same collective explains, “As long as it is our own government doing this, we cannot remain silent because silence is complicity.” 

Some of the activists we spoke with are also involved in other causes, including anti-colonial movements. The wealthy Western states contribute disproportionately to displacement and migration, that is in turn managed through increasingly exclusionary border regimes, through the exploitation of nature and the global commons as well as military interventions and conflicts. 

Fioralba Duma, co-founder of the Free Palestine Collective, has a long history of working with migrant rights in Italy and Albania, and with marginalized social groups without political rights. It was through her work on the Palestine cause that Fioralba came to understand decolonisation more deeply, and how this critical lens could be applied to the political and social dynamics in Albania. 

This implies an in-depth understanding of history from a Palestinian perspective, and a critical love for one’s country that affirms positions locally and globally which support humanism and international law, while condemning the Albanian government’s complicity in the genocide. As Duma explains, referring to Serbia’s war against Kosovo (1999) and the genocide of muslim Albanians in Çamëria (1944-45): 

“Free Palestine’s approach is this: we are Albanians, we have lived through genocide, and we understand what it means. It’s not a special status that we hold; but we lived it, and that means we understand it and we don’t want anyone else to ever experience it either. Today it’s the Palestinians; tomorrow it could be an entirely different people.”

A Solidarity Ecology

The Palestine solidarity movement that emerged in Albania after 7 October 2023 is notably heterogeneous, comprising individuals and groups with sometimes opposing political stances. The Palestinian cause has focused on articulating an end to the genocide, boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning the Israeli State, holding the Albanian government accountable for its recent collaborative stance, terminating all agreements with Israel, and recognising Palestine’s right to self-determination. 

These demands have created conditions in which diverse groups have been able to overcome deep ideological, political and religious differences, and even direct opposition, to unite in protest against the genocide unfolding in Palestine. As a solidarity ecology, Palestine has brought together queer and LGBT+ activists, feminists, progressive leftists, Muslims, Christians, conservatives, patriots, nationalists and even conspiracy theorists. 

Despite mutual distrust and suspicions about the potential instrumentalisation of the cause, these groups have engaged in lengthy negotiations to unify their voices. In the words of Duma, “Palestine has helped us cross these borders”. As emerges from interviews with other activists, Palestine is the issue that pushes everyone to transcend their own specific, radical positions, which may differ sharply from one another. 

They emphasise that now is the time to focus more than ever on Palestine, on solidarity and on mutual cooperation, and they do not hesitate to affirm that this inclusive process has made them more open and given them a broader sense of solidarity towards those who do not think as they do. “It is Palestine that unites us,” Duma says. 

In a context marked by fragmentation and significant challenges to political organisation, stemming from social, political, historical, economic and international factors, the Palestinian cause has sparked hope that differences can be overcome, both within organisations in the country and across regional Balkan organising. 

Since October 2023, pro-Palestinian protests in Albania have been among the most sustained in terms of duration, mobilisation of resources, and social media attention, even if they have not always been massive in scale. As Duma affirms, engagement with Palestine has democratised activist spaces, with the call for liberation serving as a unifying symbol of solidarity. 

Another activist, part of the group Shalqi për Paqe (Watermelon for Peace), who was initially involved in pro-Palestinian internationalist movements outside Albania, emphasises the importance of building bridges as a metaphor for cooperation between different people, highlighting the need to care for others despite their differences: “If we are going to create a bridge, people have to meet in the middle. If we are going to build a bridge, it has to be a safe one for everyone to be on that bridge.”

From interviews with activists describing the nuances of engagement within their respective groups, the concept of comradeship emerges as a common political horizon. This political bond helps to overcome specificities and political particularities in order to engage in emancipatory, egalitarian political struggle. As one activist explains, “We can be comrades; we don’t need to be friends.” Some activists place a stronger emphasis on intersectionality, while others focus more on local and situated decolonial practices built on the concept of patriotism.

Creative Disruptions

From November 2023 to June 2026, pro-Palestinian organizations in Albania have organised, co-organised and participated in numerous nationwide protests, primarily in the capital city of Tirana. Alongside these mobilisations, activists have established social media platforms aimed at disseminating information, mobilising supporters, networking and circulating announcements related to local and international actions and initiatives. 

Pro-Palestinian activists, including grassroots groups such as Palestina e Lirë, Shalqi për Paqe, Liri Palestinës, the Balkan Solidarity Network and other activist and online groups, have launched national campaigns to boycott socio-cultural activities organised by the Israeli Embassy in Albania and to sustain boycotts of Israeli products. These campaigns are in line with the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Since its inception, the pro-Palestine movement in Albania has involved public demonstrations in streets, buildings, historical monuments and peripheral neighbourhoods. The ‘Palestina e Lirë’ collective operates horizontally in an effort to be as inclusive as possible, maintaining a state of readiness for swift and unexpected actions in physical public spaces and online. 

Fioralba refers to these actions as ‘disruptive actions’. According to her, the difficulty of organising while a genocidal war is unfolding and across social networks lies in the frequent emergence of misunderstandings, and the impossibility of sitting down to talk properly, meeting in assemblies and strengthening relationships around shared values. 

Actions are often organised through social media, with people who don’t know each other personally coming to an agreement. These actions have an impromptu character, which sometimes puts the action at risk until the last moment. However, this mode of organising emerged from urgency, and activists have transformed these precarious conditions into strengths, giving their actions an element of surprise while minimising the risk of sabotage or infiltration by the authorities.

Some of these actions include: unfurling a large Palestinian flag in Tirana in opposition to the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken; protests against the visit of President Isaac Herzog to Tirana; and a banner near the National Museum reading ‘Ukraine 2 years: 30,457; Palestine: 144 days, 30,000″, which highlights perceived double standards in responses to war and Russian aggression. Other actions include graffiti condemning the IDF’s genocidal acts, expressions of support for imprisoned activists in the UK, solidarity with the Freedom Flotillas‘ humanitarian actions, and broader calls for Palestine’s liberation.

The Albanian government’s, and in particular Prime Minister Edi Rama’s support for the Israeli state has been widely exposed, criticised and challenged by writers, scholars and activists. As an alternative to campaigns calling for ‘non-action’, such as the boycott of the International Israeli Cultural Week in Albania, activists from various collectives have developed platforms for collective cultural and artistic creation in response and in opposition to Rama’s ‘cultural diplomacy’. 

In June 2024 and 2025, these grassroots groups established and curated the Month of Palestinian Culture in Albania. Activities included poetry readings, meetings with activists engaged in the Palestinian cause across the Balkan region, marches and protests, film screenings, discussions with Palestinian authors and activists, feminist readings, Palestinian culinary evenings and “Queers for Palestine” cinematic events. 

These activities were hosted across multiple social centres and alternative spaces in Tirana, Vlorë, Elbasan and Kamëz, in collaboration with independent, activist- and community-run venues such as Kur’ajo Press (Bulevard Art Space), Tek Bunkeri, Smart Centre and Drejtësi Sociale. Some of these activities extended beyond Albania through cooperation with activist centres in Kosovo, including the ‘Sekhmet’ Centre and the Feminist Collective, among others.

In addition to these engagements activists consistently sought to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause alongside other issues. For instance, they incorporated calls for Palestine into the ‘Flamingo Revolution’ protests, LGBT+ protests and 8 March feminist protests of the last three years. Activities such as marathons and football tournaments were explicitly organised in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, raising its profile through symbolic gestures, active participation, and coordinated dissemination on social media platforms. 

Furthermore, these collectives issued calls of solidarity with Iran, Lebanon, Sudan and others, such as the Albanian student movement in North Macedonia. Through anarcho-feminist activism, Binjaku emphasises:

“Colonialism is not only territorial, it is patriarchal, it is racial, it is class-based. The freedom of Palestine is freedom against all these forms of violence. You cannot support a liberation that ignores violence against queers, against women, against the poor. There can be no true liberation without the liberation of everyone. It is not only a war for territory; it is a social and bodily war, an assault that affects us all, an assault against existence, against truth, against life.”

A notable innovation in grassroots organising has been the interconnection of the Balkan region around the Palestinian cause. As activists explain, one of the first meetings leading to the creation of Balkan Solidarity Network took place online, through the event “Connecting Struggles: A Palestinian Perspective”, held as part of Palestine Cultural Month, and organised by Palestina e Lirë, Shalqi për Paqe, and Boulevard Art and Media Institute (Kur’ajo Press). After this encounter, a physical meeting was organized in Ljubljana in 2024. The Network was established as a platform that mediates and strengthens connections between anti-colonial, feminist, queer, and anti-imperialist struggles across the Balkans and beyond. 

This period was accompanied by the question of whether groups in the region, historically on opposing sides, would be able to come together. This marks the transition from local organising in individual cities in Albania, to national organising across Albania, to pan-Albanian organising, encompassing all Albanian-speaking spaces beyond official borders, and finally to regional organising, spanning the countries of the Balkans and Southeastern Europe, and extending further internationally.

If It’s Small and Insignificant, Why Police It?

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Yoel Kaplan – the Israeli chief rabbi who has been present in Albania since 2012 – dismissed the Palestine solidarity protests in the country as “tiny and irrelevant”, likening them to “bad publicity is still good publicity”. He added that he has the backing of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and that, consequently, the protests will have no real effect. 

In September 2025, activist Baki Goxhaj submitted a complaint to SPAK (the Special Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime Structure), accusing the aforementioned Chief Rabbi Yoel Kaplan with six offences, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaplan has publicly and proudly acknowledged that he participated in combat as an IDF soldier alongside his son. 

Three months later, in December 2025, the Anti-Terrorism Directorate of the State Police filed a criminal complaint against Goxhaj for “inciting hatred and discord” – an offence carrying a prison sentence of two to ten years. Listed as ‘evidence’ in the complaint, were Goxhaj’s social media posts criticising the Zionist views of Albanian MPs, journalists and intellectuals. 

All of the posts cited as incriminating acts dated from after September – the same period in which Goxhaj had filed his complaint against the chief rabbi. Ultimately, the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence. 

In an article titled “Anti-terrorism terrorizes Muslims”, Goxhaj summarised the entire history of his persecution and dismantled every argument put forward in the State Police directorate’s complaint. He concluded that “the violence of Rama’s Zionist system will only deepen against Muslim believers, especially those who speak out”.

The Albanian state’s serious investment in intimidation as evidenced by the level of attention given to it, sits in direct contradiction with the assumption that Palestine solidarity mobilisations are ‘irrelevant’. 

Consider, for example, how the police cordon surrounding every protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people has prevented protesting communities from marching freely through the capital or in front of the prime ministerial building. This alone speaks volumes about the state’s criminalising and surveilling atmosphere. 

Far from the ‘calm’ that Chief Rabbi Kaplan suggests, the state appears deeply unsettled. In January 2026, two protests were held in response to Edi Rama’s official visit to Israel – widely regarded by the Albanian public as the “shameful visit” due to its normalisation of genocide – during which Eriselda Balliu, a protester, educator and activist, had her posters torn by a plainclothes police officer. She was then forcibly removed from the area near the prime ministerial building and detained alongside fellow protester Enes Jashari. After spending several hours at the police station, they were released.

From the very beginning of its organising, the Palestine solidarity movement in Albania has been accompanied by these small acts of repression and policing. In June 2024, a protest organised by the Free Palestine Collective was surrounded by what appeared as an excessive number of police officers alongside two rapid response vans and the anti-explosive unit (Forcat Renea). 

In July 2025, the police cordoned off Skanderbeg Square, preventing hundreds of protesters from marching towards the Prime Minister’s Office. The same thing happened a month later on 16 August 2025, when protesters were again denied the right to march freely. The September 2025 gathering, though notified in accordance with legal requirements, was blocked outright by police forces. 

Activists have noted that, in the overwhelming majority of protests, the police have intervened using subtle tactics aimed at stopping or demotivating protesters, such as changing the time or day of the protest, changing the location, blocking marches, postponing dates, using disproportionate force and making outright arrests. Despite these attempts, the state seems more intimidated than intimidating. 

Against Genocide, Across Borders

Activist groups across Southeastern Europe have articulated what scholar Francesco Trupia has called “spontaneous and transnational postulates of solidarity” in line with global pro-Palestinian anti-colonial movements of the Global South. These groups are motivated by emotional and historical experiences tied to post-colonial, post-socialist, and post-genocidal processes, as well as by different premises and current contexts. 

Historically marginalised, these groups are nevertheless grounded in specific local realities in relation to Palestine. Operating under difficult social and organisational conditions, ranging from state-controlled media censorship to ongoing intimidation and criminalisation attempts, these movements have been careful to avoid any accusation of antisemitism in their anti-Zionist statements about Gaza and Palestine, as seen through the lens of feminist, urban, environmental, intersectional, and anti-colonialist activism.

Pro-Palestinian mobilisation in Albania has not broadly rearticulated any socialist legacy rooted in the history of friendly relations between the Albanian state and Palestine during the socialist regime, but has instead mobilised a new political language which links a systemic critique of the Albanian government’s neoliberal practices with collective traumas of war and genocide in Kosovo and Albania. It also reclaims Holocaust memory and the Albanian protection of Jews, insisting on them as reasons not to tolerate genocide and crimes against humanity. 

At the same time, it appeals to society on moral and legal grounds. Palestine has served as a prism through which the personal traumas of post-genocidal generations in the Balkans have been viewed and rearticulated – collective histories of expulsion, war, segregation and occupation. 

For nearly three years, Palestine has been at the centre of historical analogies used to mobilise against genocide, regardless of ideological differences. After many months, mass protests in Albania have also embraced the Palestinian cause, challenging the colonial practices of Israel and the United States which affect even the most marginalised communities worldwide. 

The post Citizens Against the State: How Albania Answered Its Government’s Embrace of Israel appeared first on Untold.

The sociologist and intellectual Shkëlzen Gashi, author of “Massacres in Kosovo 1998–1999”, has long been aware of the price to be paid for challenging the dominant narrative of those in power. 

According to the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo, his offence is “distorting the truth about the Kosovo War of Liberation”. Gashi, however, believes that the reason for the persecution is that he has written “the first book on this subject that avoids hate speech and addresses all victims on all sides, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or political ideology”. 

Gashi’s book lists names, numbers and locations, totalling 10,333 bodies across 83 massacres, arranged in chronological order. “In total I counted 105, but there are 22 about which nothing is known,” he says as he turns the pages featuring photographs of piles of bodies, funerals and mass graves, “and the most significant thing is that, for the majority of these killings, no one has been convicted. 90% of the massacres I recount in the book end with this sentence: to date, no one has been tried or convicted for these crimes.” 

Regarding the identity of the victims, he explains that “90% are Albanians killed by Serbian police, military or paramilitaries. Crimes committed by Albanians account for only 10%; they took place after the war, as acts of unorganised revenge, and were not carried out by Albanian military or police.”

Gashi dared to break the taboo surrounding the war crimes committed by Kosovo Albanians against Serbian communities; at the same time, he honours the memory of other ethnic and religious groups—Roma, Ashkali or Catholics—who have been marginalised from the official narrative and are difficult for both Serbian and Albanian nationalism to come to terms with.

The Albanian writer and dissident Fatos Lubonja has written a scathing article in which he argues that “this lynching speaks volumes about the kind of state that is in danger of being built in Kosovo (…) History teaches us that tragedy, in the form of war or dictatorship, begins when the parties identify with the truth and seek to impose it on everyone by any means”. 

For their part, representatives of the veterans’ associations of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), the guerrilla group that fought the Serbs, are calling for “a law to be enacted to protect the history of the UCK, and for anyone wishing to write on the subject to obtain evidence from the relevant authorities”. Or, in other words, from those who do not question their version of events. 

“Peacebuilding also involves establishing the truth and creating shared narratives about what happened, as well as reconciliation and letting go. In Kosovo, we haven’t had that, and it’s a serious problem. The Albanian and Serbian communities continue to live within their own constructions of reality, so there are competing narratives about the past,” laments Ramadan Ilazi, head of research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies.

Whilst this was happening in Pristina, thousands of kilometres away, in a cell at The Hague prison, Hasim Thaci, the former leader of the UCK and the West’s main ally in NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia, awaits sentencing following the trial that concluded last February. 

The Prosecution at the Special Court for Kosovo is seeking 45 years’ imprisonment for Thaci and three other guerrilla commanders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, kidnapping, torture, cruel treatment of prisoners and murder in 102 cases. 

Whatever the jury’s verdict, which is expected by the end of July 2026 it will have a major impact on Kosovo’s politics: “If he is convicted, it will have consequences for the UCK and would give Serbia a weapon to use against Kosovo and oppose its independence. If they are found not guilty, I believe it would have a major impact on domestic politics, because they would return as heroes,” explains analyst Emir Abrashi. 

Disinformation and Hybrid Warfare

On 24 April, a court in Pristina found three Kosovo Serbs guilty of terrorism and “serious acts against the constitutional order and security of Kosovo” for their involvement in an attack carried out by a Serbian-backed group of armed men in the Kosovo village of Banjska in September 2023, which resulted in the death of a Kosovo police officer.

According to the judge’s verdict, this was a “well-trained” group that “in an organised manner, entered the Republic of Kosovo illegally from the Republic of Serbia with dozens of vehicles, some armoured”. “The aim was to destabilise and destroy the basic political, constitutional, economic, and social structures of the Republic of Kosovo, through a well-organised plan. They attempted to secede parts of the territory in northern Kosovo, which have a majority Serbian population, and join them with Serbia”, the judge argued. 

Furthermore, it claims that the attackers were trained at a military camp in Serbia, and that Serbia provided all the military and logistical infrastructure needed to carry out the attack, in which up to 44 people are implicated. According to a journalistic investigation by BIRN, the grenade launchers seized by the Kosovar police had passed through Serbian state maintenance centres; and the ammunition used by the attackers matches that manufactured in 2022 by a Serbian state arms producer. 

“Serbia continues to harbour hegemonic ambitions over Kosovo,” says Arben Fetoshi, a professor at the University of Pristina and director of the Octopus Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies, “but it is waiting for a favourable geopolitical context to reclaim Kosovo. Right now they cannot invade Kosovo, which is why they are resorting to hybrid warfare: disinformation, propaganda and acts of aggression to destabilise Kosovo as an independent country.”

“In the months leading up to the attack in September 2023, we detected a large amount of disinformation originating from Serbia and focused on northern Kosovo,” confirms Fitim Gashi, executive director of SBunker, a media organisation dedicated to monitoring and combating disinformation in Kosovo, “and the main argument behind all that disinformation is that the Kosovo government wants to expel the Serbs. The message conveyed by these campaigns, many orchestrated by the Serbian government, is that Serbs are not safe in Kosovo and must take action to defend themselves.” 

According to Ilazi, this is a misguided view of the nature of Kosovo’s political system. “Kosovo wasn’t designed to be a state of a single ethnic group,” he argues, “but I think social media is amplifying these kinds of messages that seek to perpetuate this sense of permanent conflict because certain politicians stand to gain from it. You can win elections by selling dreams or selling nightmares, and I think politics has a lot to do with maintaining this atmosphere of fear and hatred.”

To Question the Narrative is to Question the Elites 

Jeton Neziraj has devoted much of his literary work and his role as a public intellectual to the very opposite: to breaking down taboos, bringing people of different backgrounds together, and telling stories that overcome fear and hatred. This playwright knows well the feeling of being the one who challenges the prejudices of the majority and the demands of the powerful. 

He was one of the promoters of POLIP, the first literary festival to bring together Serbian and Albanian authors. Furthermore, his plays explore the most uncomfortable aspects and blind spots of his country’s culture, politics and society: corruption, the LGBT community, the role of guerrilla veterans, relations with Europe and post-war reconciliation. 

For his plays, he has been branded ‘unpatriotic’, ‘Yugonostalgic’ and a ‘traitor to national interests’. His latest play is “Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept”, a co-production with a South African theatre company exploring forgiveness between communities.

“I don’t know if I’ve been very stupid or very brave,” says Neziraj as he looks back on all the times his words have proved controversial or divisive. “But I believe that is the role of an artist, to be critical. And I think it’s been useful. I believe there is now more freedom of expression in Kosovo than there was fifteen years ago. There are still problems, of course, but I think that now we wouldn’t have to call the police at a theatre premiere because there are people protesting outside, as happened to us on one occasion, or because veterans wanted to boycott the play which, allegedly, defamed the UCK.” 

It is precisely this problem with veterans that has placed Gashi at the centre of the storm in recent weeks. Gashi, like Neziraj, knew that questioning the heroic narrative of the war was ultimately tantamount to questioning the system of power that has governed the country ever since. 

The former guerrilla leaders and affiliated organisations, explains the sociologist, took control of all spheres of public life: “The university, the judiciary, television, the administration, the political parties and the media are under the control of this so-called elite that has ruled Kosovo for two decades.” In these circumstances, “the UCK has manipulated the war and its memory to stay in power. Since they supposedly liberated the country, they claim the right to rule it and justify their corruption through terror”.

In 2020, Gashi received threats and lost his job as an adviser to President Kurti for stating on television that “some senior officials in the UCK committed war crimes and should be punished for them”. The focus of his historiographical work centres on civilian victims and on the peaceful resistance against Serbian oppression, which, in his view, has been overlooked by official historians intent on highlighting the role of the guerrillas. 

“My aim with this book was to clarify what had happened in each of the massacres. A book like this should be written about every single violation of humanitarian law that took place during the war. First we must know exactly what happened, then there must be reparations, and it is very important that the history textbooks used in schools are revised.” 

The Views of Veterans

Gazmend Syla joined the UCK at the age of 16 and today, at 45, he is the vice-president of the National Veterans’ Association, an organisation with branches in virtually every municipality in the country. Syla speaks with pride of the sacrifices made by his comrades, which, in his view, have not been sufficiently recognised by his compatriots.

We are at the organisation’s headquarters in Peja, one of the main guerrilla strongholds during the conflict, and the walls are covered with flags, emblems and photographs of the martyrs. “Nobody likes war. But you have to go if someone wants to kill you,” he explains after recounting the exploits of some of the “3,000 martyrs” recognised by the organisation.

Syla explains that the organisation’s mission is, at its core, like that of an NGO: “We help veterans when they have a need and mediate with the government to convey their demands.” And what about its influence in politics? “We don’t have a party of our own, but we do have relations with many different parties,” he replies. 

Asked about the trial in The Hague against Thaci and other guerrilla leaders, Syla replies indignantly: it is a set-up against innocent men, the witnesses have been bribed to testify against the UCK and it all boils down, in essence, to “a political issue”. 

The veterans’ association has organised mass demonstrations in Pristina, Tirana and The Hague to demand the acquittal of the accused. He does not wish to conclude the matter without pointing the finger at Western nations: “We fought alongside the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. They helped create the UCK, fought with us and supplied us with weapons. If we are guilty, then NATO is too.”

Syla is unwavering in his defence of the UCK’s political and military role in Kosovo’s independence, and regards the guerrilla movement as one of the pillars of national life. “We are free now and my children go to school,” he explains, “before, in Yugoslavia, we had nothing and the police and the military would beat us for speaking our own language. We had to fight to be free, and now we are doing well. Perhaps we’re not like Switzerland or Spain, but this is our country and we’re happy here.” 

However, his view on relations with Serbia and the Serbs of Kosovo is not what one might expect from a former guerrilla fighter. “The Serbs are citizens of Kosovo just like anyone else. They’re not to blame. They are my neighbours and I get on with them just fine. Their freedoms and political rights are recognised by the Constitution, and that is how it should be.” 

Syla is highly critical of Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s attempts to exclude Lista Sprska, the main Serbian political party in Kosovo, from the elections or to outlaw it: “They should be left in peace.” 

“The things I think and am telling you now, I can’t say them at meetings with the veterans,” Syla laments, sadly, “there, they only want strong, more aggressive rhetoric. And it’s a shame.”

The post To Question Memory is to Question Power: The Narrative of Violence is Shaking up Political Life in Kosovo appeared first on Untold.

Following the controversial agreement between Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and Albanian PM Edi Rama to process asylum seekers outside the EU, two detention centres in the port of Shengjin and the village of Gjader were opened in October 2024. 

Despite being located in northern Albania, the camps are completely under Italian control and have shifted to serving as ‘deportation hubs.’ 

Shrouded in secrecy, little is known about the deal. Albanian and Italian authorities rarely answer Freedom of Information Requests about it. The public only knows what officials announce sparingly to the press. The number of migrants behind the grey walls of the detention centre is ever-changing, and no official records are made public. 

Currently, 90 people are held in Gjader. Usually picked directly at sea and dumped in cells, but called “guests” in the official forms. 

Access to the centres is extremely restricted for human rights observers. Through the few testimonies of survivors, Italian and European MEPs who visited, it was revealed that detainees face isolation and languish without communal or recreational spaces.

For Fioralba Duma, an Italo-Albanian activist and member of the grassroots migrant and civil rights collective Mesdhe Collective in Albania, detention centres are impossible to be humane. “This is a ‘black hole’ site invented for this occasion. The environment in detention centres is extremely pathogenic,” she adds, recalling the case of an Albanian man committing suicide in migration detention in the UK. 

Whilst no deaths have been recorded so far, former detainee Younouse Kone revealed to journalists that he witnessed two suicide attempts in the short time he spent in Gjader. Likewise, the facility’s ‘Critical Incidents’ sheet, shown only to MEPs, listed multiple incidents of self-harm. 

Albania’s Complicated Journey with Democracy 

After a successful tourism campaign, rebranding Albania’s image from a poverty-ridden, isolated country of emigration to an idyllic getaway, drawing investment by the likes of the Kushner and Trump families, Prime Minister Edi Rama has been on a fervent crusade to raise Albania’s status as a ‘success case’ in a region often marred by political and economic instability. 

Tracing back to Albania’s troubled past, the agreement is problematic. According to Sidorela Vatnikaj, a Tirana-based activist with Mesdhe, “if Albania were really a fully democratic state, the deal wouldn’t have happened. Albanian citizens only got to find out about the deal once it was signed by Rama, and Italian media started to report on it.” 

“This is a worrisome sign for the state of public transparency and an indicator of how the Albanian government could be acting in other issues. It shows that anything can happen without the public’s consent. The Rama-Meloni deal is the most visible violation of democracy and the state of law,” Vatnikaj explains.  

Indeed, the campaign hasn’t gone unchallenged. For Vatnikaj, one of the most acute problems was how mainstream Albanian media reported on their movement. “Albanian media framed our march as ‘anti-immigrant’ mobilisations trying to create a false narrative that these are ‘racist’ protests.”

Ranking 83rd on the World Press Freedom Index, media independence in the country is compromised by conflicts of interest between the business and political worlds and inadequate legal frameworks. 

Duma also notes that the group has suffered intimidation, directly affecting local organisers, one of whom, based in Lezhe, had their mother fired from her civil service position due to her activism – later reinstated after a complaint. 

Two other Albanian activists were detained for going to the opening ceremony of the Shengjin detention centre when Meloni was present, and hanging a protest banner from the rooftop of a building and using a sound system to play the announcement of the occupation of Albania by Italian troops during WWII. “We have the right to protest this, and we did so peacefully without causing any damage, yet our comrades were still detained”, Duma explains.

Activists believe that the deal is enforcing neocolonial dynamics, with Vatnikaj pointing out that the arrangement breaches Albania’s sovereignty for the sake of its ‘special relationship’ with Italy: “In essence, we handed over parts of our land to a completely Italian-run, Italian-funded administration. Are we actually an equal and respected part of the European community when we are being used as a “dumping ground” for migrants?”

For Duma the deal is a form of blackmail: “It implies that we have to accept things like that because of the financial or political support we have received from Italy regarding EU accession talks” or the supposed ‘welcome’ Albanians received in the 1990s as migrants in Italy, which in Duma’s words had nothing to do with the government and all to do with mutual aid groups, local communities, churches and individuals helping out of kindness.

How Activists Fight Back

“These camps were built for our parents in Europe,” one of the Mesdhe activists explains whilst giving a speech during a protest. The agreement now forces Albania to confront the fact that most of its citizens remain a target for ‘fortress Europe’. 

From violent pushbacks to detention, exploitation and criminalisation, the generations of Albanians who experienced the aftermath of regime collapse and mass displacement have had their life trajectories changed by such restrictions. The society they left behind was also deeply changed by their absence, with whole villages being almost emptied. 

For Albanian activists, this reality fuels their incentives to protest regressive government policies that do not represent the country’s historical experience. 

Duma says that for the Albanian activists, the agreement is viewed through the lens of whether it adheres to Albania’s historical memory as a displaced people and to Albanian values of hospitality. Vatnikaj adds that the deal goes against Albania’s very core as a nation, where “every family has a story to tell about the hardships Albanian immigrants have faced abroad”. 

Activists mobilised quite quickly in response despite the novelty of the situation. When the first ship arrived, they “welcomed” it with a banner reading “The European dream ends here.”

However, it took hard work before the group managed to get outside the walls of the Gjader detention camp in November 2025. Vatnikaj recalls that when they first started organising, they needed to figure out many things, as immigration in that context hadn’t been an issue in Albania before: “We mobilised around the unifying message of standing for human and migrant rights”. 

Solidarity beyond borders has been essential for the movement. Vatnikaj explains that Albanian activists are working with collectives in Italy and Europe, marching together, and organising assemblies: “We need knowledge, and we need people to fight with. Cross-border solidarity is essential.” 

In Duma’s experience as an Albanian migrant in Italy, striving to connect Albanian and Italian activist circles has been a lifelong aspiration. This goal has powered her resolve to create a shared space where activists can make meaningful exchanges. “Italian activists have helped us a lot with capacity-building and information-sharing. Now we have been building these platforms to join forces and create solidarity networks, with second-generation migrants in Italy being a crucial link between Italian and Albanian-based activists. Having them by our side is giving us hope. It is a really powerful gesture that they have joined us, and now we can say we are friends in the truest sense,” she adds. 

As a result of one of those assemblies, the idea for the collective march was born, which is now set to become an annual action for as long as the detention centres remain. . 

Activism has also been happening on an institutional level through advocating as a coalition with Italian parliamentary deputies and producing research on the topic. Activists have also been pursuing a legal challenge to the agreement, despite an underwhelming response from EU legal circles. 

Some wins on individual cases have also been scored when Italian courts or the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled against their deportation to Albania, and it has been proven a fruitful avenue, as many of the detainees sent to Albania have been returned. 

The Way Ahead 

With economic development resulting from tourism and construction, the issue of migration, that has always preoccupied public discourse, is now shifting from Albanians as migrants themselves to the country slowly becoming a destination for seasonal and manual labour, as workers from as far as the Philippines or Colombia come to the country in hopes of making a living.

Vatnikaj with her collective have been assisting Nigerian migrants coming to Albania to work highlighting a small shift towards Albania becoming a destination for foreign workers: “It is not uncommon to have their rights violated, so now immigration becomes a more visible phenomenon and for us we can demonstrate how exploitation and abuse can manifest in the Balkans”. 

Whilst activists prepare for further mobilisations, Duma says that it is paramount for them to expose the suffering of those in the migration routes who are often trivialised: “The far right has done a lot of damage by infiltrating people’s minds and making them accept this situation as a positive thing that needs to be done.” 

Vatnikaj adds, ”Between Albanian, Italian and European officials, this agreement is talked about as a success, but to us, activists and ordinary people alike, this is a moral failure.”

Vatnikaj now finds herself disillusioned with the ideals she was raised with. Growing up hearing that in Europe, states respect human rights and civic freedoms, many of these beliefs don’t hold anymore. “As migrants, we have experienced abuse, discrimination and racism abroad, and it is hard for me to believe that our country is now doing the same,” says Vatnikaj. 

Emerging from a decades-long dictatorship, many grew up hearing phrases such as “Albania needs to be part of Europe because Europe is a Utopia. Europe is the dream,” because of the presumed respect for democracy, prosperity and freedom. “Now that we see how those in the margins are treated, we don’t really have any state to look up to as the blueprint for all those freedoms. It feels like we lost our dream,” Vatnikaj explains.

With Western countries looking to expand and emulate this model, this is an uphill battle. The deal between Italy and Albania is not the first attempt by an EU government to use a third country as a return hub. In attempts to externalise asylum and create offshore processing centres, after a short-lived arrangement with Rwanda, the UK is courting Macedonia, after being rejected by Albania for a similar arrangement. In that dim backdrop, activists continue their fight. 

The post “These Camps Were Built for our Parents”: Albanian Activists Resist Italy’s Offshore Detention Experiment appeared first on Untold.

OK.

‘No creativity, please, no wordart, or graphics, don’t stand out, unreadable.’ 

OK.

‘Don’t clutter your CV with photos, tables, columns, headers, or footers, unreadable.’ 

OK.

How many of these little nuggets have you read or heard about when the topic of résumés comes up? I heard them all and many, many more – from ‘experts’ and fellow job seekers alike. Everyone wants that edge, but not too edgy. Clarity, but using a specific format. Showcasing you, but … there’s always a but.

While researching this topic, I had my résumé open the whole time to see if it stood the test. It never did. I’d rephrase and rewrite sections according to what I read. Only to revert back or make new changes. Each article gives hope of the ‘perfect formula’ to pass the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and get the attention of the human on the other side.

But here’s where it gets interesting – there’s no unified ATS that all companies use. No. Each company uses a different system, with its own unique algorithms. And you, dear applicant,  need to figure out which ATS the company uses so you can tailor your résumé to pass it.

How about that for a plot twist.

ATS in Action

The way ATS works is simple: it reads résumés by electronically analyzing (parsing) the relevant information, like name, education, and experience, then sorts them for the recruiter in a searchable format. 

One of its common features is keyword search – the system looks for specific words already mentioned in the job description, e.g. a specific number of years’ experience, certain skills, or a location. It also tracks candidates through the whole process, from application to interview results, and saves their information even if they were not selected, for future opportunities.

Beyond screening, it also handles job postings, interview scheduling, compliance reporting, and candidate notifications – managing the entire hiring workflow from start to finish. The system is built to handle large numbers of résumés, which is why it’s widely used to streamline the hiring process and free up time and resources.

A Timeline

The hiring process was not as sophisticated as it is now. Companies sent job postings to newspapers, you read the ad and sent your résumé by post or in person, recruiters waded through the lot and chose the most suitable candidates and invited them – by mail or by phone – for an interview. 

Too slow. Something had to be done to speed things up. Enter ATS. 

In the 1970s, it was just basic data entry with limited reporting capabilities. The 1980s saw added features like résumé parsing for faster sorting and analysis. The drawback was that it was expensive and difficult to use, which made it only implemented by large enterprises.

With the emergence of the internet in the 1990s, job postings and applications moved online. The system saw more advanced algorithms like candidate evaluation and ranking.

From the 2010s onwards, the Cloud enabled smaller companies to use ATS due to scalable and flexible subscription payments. The system’s analytics and reporting capabilities became more advanced, tracking criteria like cost per hire and time to fill. As mobile technology evolved, more and more candidates began using their mobile devices and social media accounts to apply.

When it comes to integrating AI, ATS is no exception – many providers have already built it into their products. There are even predictions that the future might even bring virtual reality and augmented reality technologies that could change the interview process completely.

ATS as a Business

The business of ATS software is booming. 

A 2025 report shows that the global ATS market was worth $2.5 billion in 2024 – a 12.3% jump from 2023. The top ten vendors alone controlled over 50% of that market, led by iCIMS at 10%, followed by Oracle, Workday, and Greenhouse Software. Annual growth among the top vendors was sharp: in one year, Workday grew 15.3% and Greenhouse 13.2%.

Reading the profiles of these leading vendors, one thing is very clear – AI is the star of their products. iCIMS has expanded its AI footprint with conversational tools and assessment features, even piloting autonomous AI Agents to handle sourcing and interview tasks. 

Oracle integrates generative AI into its Recruiting Cloud, using embedded co-pilots for job description optimization and candidate ranking. Workday is building a multi-agent ecosystem through its Illuminate system. Greenhouse is evolving into an agent-oriented platform, enabling third-party conversational AI to autonomously screen and schedule interviews.

Together, these plans paint a picture of ATS companies positioning AI as the backbone of the entire hiring process – shifting routine tasks to automation, with more on the way.

A 2026 report by 360 Research Reports puts the market at nearly $5 billion and is projected to reach $13 billion by 2035. As of 2025, 94% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS, and 78% of large enterprises have one built into their hiring process. Small and medium businesses are not far behind – 62% have adopted cloud-based platforms. AI-powered screening tools grew 46% year-over-year, and demand for mobile-friendly and analytics-driven systems has grown 59% since 2022. In the new analysis, Workday now holds 14% of global market share, while Oracle holds 12%.

Two things stood out in the 360 report key findings: a ‘56% rise in AI-driven candidate scoring and predictive analytics tools’, and ‘47% of new product launches focusing on AI, machine learning, and mobile optimization.’

What this means is that the AI-powered ATS train didn’t just leave the station, it’s almost at its destination. The demand for it is growing faster than you can say ‘bias.’ Companies implementing it will not look back now, even with four out of ten – according to the same report – saying they struggle with integrating and migrating data from older HR systems. 

AI in hiring is here to stay.

Built on Broken Data

The study by Douglas Guilbeault and colleagues reveals how generative AI like ChatGPT perpetuates gender and age bias in hiring. When prompted to create over 34,500 résumés for 54 jobs using typical male or female names, ChatGPT portrayed women as younger and with less work experience than men.

When asked to evaluate the same résumés, the AI ranked older men highest in quality, putting older women and younger applicants at a disadvantage – the same groups that already face discrimination in the real world. This happens because the model draws from internet data filled with stereotypes (e.g., men are better at ‘fixing things’ and therefore suited for roles like construction) – amplifying societal biases rather than reflecting objective reality.

Guilbeault observes that AI companies are aware of the problem. But their fix is to add filters to block the most obviously biased outputs. He argues that this barely scratches the surface – it misses subtler biases like the age and gender gaps the study found. Real progress means tackling bias at the core of how these models are built, not patching after the fact. Until then, his advice is simple: be cautious. These tools can make you believe the issue of bias is resolved when it’s really not.

Another study tested several LLMs from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta by having them score over 360,000 randomized résumés with different gender and racial identities. Compared with equally qualified White men, most models gave higher scores to female candidates (both Black and White) but lower scores to Black male candidates. These differences translate into real hiring impacts: women would have a higher chance of being selected, while Black men faced reduced odds.

Together, the two studies show that AI bias in hiring cannot be solved with patchwork fixes. It shows up in how résumés are generated, how they’re scored, and whose careers pay the price. With these inherent biases baked into the data, why do we expect AI-powered ATS to be fair in résumé screening?

Gaming the System

Writing a résumé should be an easy task – you put in the basic information an employer needs to consider you for a job, right? Wrong. It’s more than that, much more. I thought I knew a thing or two – I’ve had one for years. But after a career break, getting back into the job market, writing my résumé was anything but easy.

There is so much advice out there on how to write one, so I won’t repeat it here. What I want to focus on is something most of that advice misses – it’s not the usual suspects. Many websites advertise ATS-friendly templates complete with checker and scorer services, and if it doesn’t meet the minimum score, you need to rewrite it. Fine, I can live with that. What I’m not fine with is having to look for which ATS the company is using to tailor my résumé according to its algorithms.

For a simple experiment, I tried a LinkedIn job search, clicked on the ‘Apply’ button – not ‘Easy Apply’ – and it took me to the original website for the job. The platform the job was sourced from uses iCIMS. It was easy to see, I found it at the bottom of the page: ‘Powered by iCIMS.’ It’s also in the URL: ‘nameofplatform.icims.com/jobs/’

‘What do I do with that info?’
Easy, you google ‘how to optimize résumés for iCIMS’, which will give you many articles that try to explain how that specific system works. For example, it prefers simple fonts – Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman – and verbatim keywords from the job posting. This doesn’t just work for iCIMS, but for Workday, Oracle, and others. And if you can’t find the ATS yourself, Jobscan – for a fee – can do that with simple steps and give you optimization tips as well.

Is that something you needed to know? Absolutely, yes.
Will it make job searching easier for you? A resounding no.

Being a minimalist, I thought since my résumé has the basics, what more would an employer need? But I was mistaken. It’s the ATS I need to get past to reach the actual human. I hope you think of this new information as intel, not extra work.

But sometimes job candidates take it too far. 

I recently read about how Amazon is banning job seekers from using AI tools during interviews. Given the volume of candidates it receives, the company issued a set of guidelines to its internal recruiters to create ‘a fair and transparent recruitment process.’ Unless explicitly permitted, applicants may be disqualified if they used AI tools during the interview.

The problem became so widespread that Amazon shared tips on common signs the applicant is using an AI tool. Sometimes candidates sound as if they are reading instead of speaking naturally, even correcting themselves when they misread a word. Their eyes may follow text or drift away rather than focusing on the conversation. They might give confident answers that don’t directly address the question, or appear distracted and confused when reacting to AI‑generated outputs that don’t make sense.

And honestly? That’s only fair. You already have a foot in the door – showing your true self and answering naturally is the right way to go.

That said, and as a fellow traveler down the same road, I completely understand. Each step – learning about the job, tailoring your résumé, waiting for a response, and finally getting the ‘we invite you for an interview’ email – all that takes its toll, and you want the edge, any edge to ace that interview.

But if you’re considering using AI at that specific stage, think about it. What if it’s just a chat to tell you about the company and field your questions? What if it’s a work test? Who’ll be doing the actual work if not you? 

What if the company uses a platform like HireVue? Instead of a standard interview, candidates complete short game-based tasks designed to measure things like pattern recognition, working memory, and problem-solving. You could be tasked with performing actual job scenarios to test whether you can do the work, not just talk about it. What then?

The Human Cost

When hiring systems shut out qualified people, the economic consequences go far beyond the individual. Historically marginalized communities, including women and people with ethnic backgrounds, end up missing out on jobs – meaning fewer chances to grow in a career, build stability, or move toward long‑term security. 

Over time, this kind of exclusion widens existing wealth gaps and keeps certain groups stuck in cycles of underemployment and limited opportunity. And because well‑paid jobs often come with benefits like health insurance and retirement plans, being pushed out of those deepens inequalities even further.

Disclaimer: The following might be sensitive for some. If you find that it resonates with you to the point of disrupting your daily life, please, seek professional help.

Taking the consequences a step inward to what it does to the person on the receiving end – a psychological phenomenon called ‘job rejection fatigue.’ It’s the ‘emotional and mental exhaustion that builds up from receiving repeated job rejections over time.’ This doesn’t happen from one email – it’s the compound effect of several disappointments. It affects not just your confidence but also your health and social relations. 

But how does it compare to the stress that naturally comes from job searching? The simple answer: they’re two different beasts. When you’re looking for a job, you’re evaluating everything – from the role itself, to how many applicants, to your fit, to the company, etc. The uncertainty of the process causes stress. Job rejection fatigue is very specific to those rejection emails. Every single one piles it on till you reach a point when you fear opening the email to read the verdict.

The common advice you hear in this situation is ‘don’t take it personally.’ It doesn’t work and here’s why. The phenomenon is deeply connected to evolution: when the early human was rejected from the tribe/group/clan, it meant potential death. Those who took it ‘seriously’ survived, and you’re their descendant. So, it’s only an instinctive response – feeling the weight of it the way you do.

Here are the common signs to watch out for:

Emotional Symptoms: decreased motivation to apply, anxiety before opening emails, doubting your qualifications or career choices.

Behavioural Changes: reduced application quality, delaying search tasks, avoiding networking events, or withdrawing from social gatherings.

Physical Symptoms: changes in sleep patterns or in appetite, increased headaches, muscle tension, or fatigue even after getting rest.

If ignored, it might affect your life in the long run:

Relationship Strain: feeling irritable, withdrawn, volatile, or negative about your prospects can affect the people in your circle.

Career Stagnation: ‘settling’ for a role that doesn’t align with your qualifications or goals, and accepting terms without negotiating for salary or benefits.

Long-Term Confidence Issues: continued anxiety even after landing a job, imposter syndrome – doubting your abilities even when you’ve clearly earned your place – not pursuing better opportunities, nor building connections that might lead to better prospects.

If caught early, job rejection fatigue is manageable, here’s how:

Start with your mindset: think of every ‘no’ not as a judgment on who you are, but as a sign that it was the wrong fit. 

Change your tactics: instead of exhausting yourself with many applications, focus on a few thoughtful ones. This way you stay connected to your intentions and goals. 

Practice mindfulness: have small rituals to process disappointment – take a walk or do breathing exercises, just set aside some time for your body to recover. 

Take stock of how far you’ve come: be it skills, clarity, or resilience – you haven’t been standing still. It’s just a dry spell not a failure.

You need to always remind yourself that there’s more to you than a job seeker – you have your routines, your people, your hobbies, the parts of your life that shine despite someone else’s decision. Through all of it, give yourself grace; so much of hiring is outside your control, and the effort you’re making is already evidence of what you’re made of.

Fighting Back

One of the most famous cases is Derek Mobley v. Workday, Inc. 

In 2023, Mobley sued Workday alleging its AI tools discriminated against him based on race, age, and disability. The case was first dismissed because Workday was classified as an employment agency, but was later accepted in 2024 after a federal judge ruled that the company had a role in the decision‑making process by using workforce data from its customers’ companies to train its AI without accounting for the bias already present in that data.

In May 2025, a California district judge certified the case as a collective action suit – meaning anyone affected by the platform’s AI decisions could join. By July 2025, the case expanded to include individuals affected by HiredScore, an AI tool used by Workday customers to score, sort, rank, and screen applicants. The court also ordered the company to produce a list of their customers.

A more recent case was filed in California by job applicants Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik against Eightfold – an AI-hiring platform – in January 2026. The platform works by assessing applicants and predicting whether they’d be a ‘good fit’ for a job based on résumé and job listing data.

According to the lawsuit, Eightfold builds profiles on job seekers that go beyond listing their qualifications. They assign personality labels, such as ‘team player’, rank the quality of their education, and predict where their career is headed. It’s accused of doing so by collecting this data without the applicants’ knowledge, consent, or the chance to correct any mistakes.

Kistler and Bhaumik use an already existing law – the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). They argue that Eightfold’s profiles function just like credit reports: sensitive data, collected and used to make decisions about people’s futures. FCRA makes sure that sensitive information collected by credit bureaus and similar agencies is only shared with people who have a legitimate reason to see it. It also requires companies to investigate disputes and to tell consumers if a credit, insurance, or job decision goes against them because of what’s in their report.

At the time of writing, a ruling hasn’t been issued for either case.

For many, lawsuits are a last resort – who wants the stress, the hassle, and the cost of a long litigation process? But sometimes it’s the only way to get any justice at all. 

If successful, those involved could get some closure. More importantly, job hiring platforms would be pushed to put their house in order – auditing their tools and cleaning up biased training data before it hurts someone’s future. 

‘…, There’s a Way’

In 2021, Dr. Sandra Wachter, professor of technology and regulation at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, developed a bias test – the Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD). It’s designed to reveal when one group is rejected more often than it is accepted.

Here’s what it would look like in hiring: we have equal numbers of men and women applying for the same job. Now think of their applications falling into two piles – the rejected pile and the hired pile. If women keep landing in the rejected pile more than the hired pile, while the opposite happens to men, something is clearly wrong. That imbalance is what the test flags as demographic disparity. The group losing out is marked as ‘disfavored,’ while the group benefiting is marked as ‘favored.’ The data simply speaks for itself.

A strong example of how effective this test can be comes from a 2024 audit in the Netherlands. Investigators found that the Education Executive Agency (DUO) was unfairly flagging students with non‑European migration backgrounds for extra checks, leading to indirect discrimination. The issue was serious enough that it was sent to the Dutch Parliament, and the minister for Education, Culture and Science issued a formal apology once the findings were published.

Wachter’s CDD has already proven it works. The real question is why it hasn’t been widely adopted – it’s in companies’ best interest to fill positions with suitable candidates the first time around, without waiting for a lawsuit to force the issue.

Another solution comes from a study where participants were given AI-generated résumés with White, Asian, Black, or Latino-sounding names or other indicators of race, and asked to recommend who should be invited for an interview.

The results show that when people made hiring choices alongside AI recommendations, they often mirrored the system’s biases. With fair suggestions, participants chose fairly – but when the AI displayed moderate bias, people followed it almost completely. Even under severe bias, they still followed the AI’s lead about 90% of the time.

The researchers concluded that human decision-makers tend to trust AI guidance unless the bias is very obvious, and propose a solution: the implicit association test – a psychological tool used to reveal hidden or subconscious biases people may not realize they have. According to the study, biased decisions dropped by 13% after taking it. They recommended adding such training alongside educating recruiters about AI’s limits as a way to reduce hiring bias.

There are also recommendations for companies to better streamline hiring without compromising transparency or efficiency. The frustration of job seekers who spend six to twelve months looking might make some turn to litigation, which could be incentive enough for hiring teams to take staff training for better practices more seriously.

Companies should optimize their tools for fairness and not just efficiency by reevaluating historical data the AIs are trained on – it might be perpetuating bias. The assessment and predictive tools meant to test the applicant’s ‘cultural fit’ with a prospective employer might discriminate against certain demographic groups.

With the EU AI Act and California’s SB 53 (Transparency in Frontier AI Act) treating the use of AI in hiring as a ‘high‑risk’ activity, companies must now exercise stricter oversight throughout the process and meet compliance requirements – otherwise they risk facing severe legal consequences.

The bottom line for companies: audit current screening processes, check whether AI is independently making decisions, and ensure each step is fair and job-related. The goal is a system that catches and mitigates inevitable human mistakes – perfect hiring doesn’t exist.

When I read about these methods and recommendations for the first time, I put myself in the shoes of employers and thought implementing them might be difficult, expensive, or time-consuming. But then again, do companies really thrive on never-ending hiring rounds, turning away the best person for the job, negative reviews, or liability lawsuits? 

If not … 

Your move.

What’s ahead

Some problems just don’t have an easy fix – AI-powered ATS is shaping up to be one of them. The signs are there, the effects are becoming more visible every day, and the consequences are easy to predict. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ It’s the will that is missing.

In some cultures including my own, work is not just about having an income – it’s tied to the self-respect and social standing that come from an honest day’s work. Being unemployed and actively looking should not be an extra burden on top of the demand of making ends meet. It cannot turn into a game of charades: I’ll pretend to apply to a human, a human will pretend to hire, and AI is right in the middle making all the decisions.

How about making life easier for everyone by dropping all pretenses. No one is buying it anymore. All those webinars, podcasts, articles, and advice might be helpful if the system were open and its decisions understood. Not knowing why you were rejected is frustrating enough. Getting a rejection email that lists possible reasons and you pick which one applies – that’s not transparency, that’s busywork.

Looking for an edge in the job market should come from your qualifications, potential, talents, skills, and experience, not from fixing a résumé with the right fonts and keywords so an AI can read it – that’s not building a career, that’s choosing wallpaper.

Let it stop with us. 

Make the next person sending out applications feel that they’ll be evaluated for their achievements. That the process is fair and the decisions explainable. That the barriers are not invisible. That the system actually works.

The post Applicant Tracking Systems: The AI That Broke Hiring appeared first on Untold.

***

Sometime in the 1960s, the famous zajjal (Lebanese folk poet) Zein Shu’ayb (1922 – 2005) from south Lebanon performed with his troupe Zaghloul al-Damour, a poetic duel that was filmed and broadcast on Lebanese television. 

The recording survived and decades later, like many of Zein’s performances, it resurfaced on YouTube and was remixed on hip-hop and rap beats, circulating again in new videos. Listening to it today, the rhythm feels familiar to us, almost like a rap song, with its fast delivery, verbal challenge and repeated lines. Yet Zein Shu’ayb’s words echo a much older poetic tradition, which was performed in village gatherings before large mass audiences. 

In these various remixes, vernacular poetry that existed for centuries circulate easily on digital media, showing how public storytelling changes form without disappearing. Before hashtags and social media, history in the Arab world was already performed, debated and shared in public through voices like these.

History does not live in archives or behind campus walls. It is a public good — accessible, open and shared. It is an active and living force involving personal and communal practices that extend beyond researchers and university professors. This is the essence of “public history,” which brings the past into our streets and digital spaces.

Today, the accessibility and circulation of information define our age. It lives in coffee shops and museums, on theatre stages and YouTube channels, in family albums and neighbourhood archives. A growing popular interest in the past has given rise to thousands of podcasts and social media channels each year. As digital technologies make it easier to share interpretations of history, it becomes increasingly important to reflect on how historical knowledge is produced and communicated to wider audiences.

In the Arabic speaking world, these practices long predate the term “public history.” Moving between contemporary examples and older traditions, from the Hakawati to Zajal and Qawl, communities have transmitted memory, identity and political commentary through public performance for centuries. What is today described as “public history” is, in many ways, a continuation of these older traditions — now unfolding in digital and institutional spaces as well revealing how deeply rooted these practices are in the region.

Making History (More) Public 

The term “public history” emerged in the United States in the 1970s, when Robert (Bob) Kelley, a historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, used it to describe a new training programme aimed at expanding career opportunities beyond formal education. Over time, the term came to refer more broadly to historical activities conducted outside universities, including curated exhibitions, walking tours and other forms of engagement.

Although initially connected to Western networks in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, public history has become increasingly international and diverse. The popularisation of the term in the Western world does not mean that the practice originated there. Communities across the Global South have long engaged in forms of public history. More recently, these practices have been formalised through national associations such as the Rede Brasileira de História Pública (2012), the Italian Association for Public History (2017) and the Japanese Association of Public History (2018).

Defining public history is not straightforward. It can take different meanings in different contexts. At its core, however, it seeks to make historical narratives and heritage more accessible while encouraging communities to participate in shaping them through family archives, local initiatives and collective practices.

History in the Public Space 

Initially understood as history produced outside academia, public history often takes place in cultural institutions such as libraries and museums. When these institutions focus on historical topics, their outreach and engagement activities become forms of public history.

History museums have long been part of the cultural fabric of the Arab world. The Egyptian Museum (founded in 1858) and the National Museum in Lebanon (founded in 1942) can be seen as early institutional examples of public history through their public programming.

More recent initiatives are also accessible online, including the Women and Memory Forum in Egypt (since 1995) and the Palestinian Museum (since 2018). Public history can also be displayed and performed in theatres, on walls and in streets through guided tours and festivals. In its diverse forms, it creates spaces that connect society with material culture and heritage.

Communicating with the Public 

Making history public means communicating it beyond specialist audiences, reaching those who may not engage with academic books or research.

Public history employs a wide range of media, including exhibitions, documentary films, guided tours, board games, comics, graphic novels, websites and newspapers. With the rise of digital technologies, it has expanded into social media, podcasts and online collections.

In the Arab world, examples include the Qatar National Library’s podcast series and the community archiving initiative Keys to Palestine. Individual initiatives also contribute to this landscape, such as Charles Al Hayek’s Heritage and Roots channel and his LBCI television programme “بقصة لبنان” (“Lebanon in a Story”), now in its fifth season with co-presenter Yazbek Wehbe.

YouTube channels and podcasts have become particularly prominent platforms. The Al Jazeera+ series Al Jahbaz features content creator Bisher Najjar re-enacting moments from the history of the Greater Syria region through performance and satire, with references listed in each video description.

As with cultural and media institutions more broadly, political agendas can influence which historical narratives are curated and how they are presented to the public.

Public Participation 

Public history is by definition a collective process. Exhibitions, digital platforms and archives require time, skills and collaboration among curators, designers, educators and media professionals.

Some initiatives extend participation further through “co-creation,” involving members of the public in collecting and preserving objects, photographs and oral testimonies. Citizen committees may design and lead projects about their neighbourhoods or specific events.

In this way, public history can help restore agency and power to people. Rather than relying solely on national discourses constructed by states and authorities — which often marginalise certain communities — it may begin with smaller stories that complicate larger narratives.

One recent initiative in the Arab world is Shubra’s archive, developed in Cairo’s Shubra neighbourhood to document and share local history with its residents.

Many participatory initiatives rely on oral history. The American University of Beirut’s Ras Beirut project documents the history of a neighbourhood through residents’ voices. Other initiatives have recorded the social history of Palestine, including the Al Rowat storytelling platform, Nakba through oral history, and accounts of leading female figures, persecuted queer figures and political exiles. Some participatory projects operate “under the radar” to avoid external scrutiny or surveillance.

Oral history is often seen as a means of empowering marginalised and under-represented communities to influence and enrich official narratives. It also fosters critical engagement with contemporary social and political issues rooted in the past. The early Arab Nationalist Movement used the term tathqif to describe engagement with the public that combined education with political awareness.

An Ancient Practice 

Public history practices in Lebanon and the Levant can be traced back centuries, including mediaeval traditions and earlier Jahiliyya poetry that recorded and performed history within communities and at larger gatherings.

Three examples are particularly illustrative: the Hakawati, al-Zajal and al-Qawl.

The Hakawati is a storyteller who recounts tales from Arab heritage in coffee shops or open-air settings using vernacular Arabic. While traditionally male, women such as Shalabieh al Hakawatieh (Sally Shalabi) now also practise this art.

Similar traditions exist across the Arab world under different names, including Nabaṭī poetry in the Arabian Peninsula, Humayni poetry in Yemen, Malhūn in Morocco and Dubeit in Sudan. These traditions share features such as vernacular language, collective participation, historical transmission and public performance.

Al-Zajal, a Lebanese vernacular poetry tradition inscribed on UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, is another example. One early documented case is attributed to Sulayman al-Ashluhi, a Christian monk from Akkar, who composed verses after the fall of Tripoli in 1289, recording the capture of the County of Tripoli (1102-1289), one of the Crusader states, by the Mamluks. In doing so, it recorded historical events in a form accessible to local audiences.

While al-Zajal refers specifically to the Lebanese folk poetry tradition, al-Qawl encompasses spoken word practices more broadly across the Arab world. Both traditions share several defining principles.

First is the use of vernacular language. Qawl is rarely written in classical, standardised Arabic, as its aim is to reach broad audiences, particularly in rural areas. It expresses local traditions and dialects, in contrast to the formal literacy often associated with urban centres. This gives Qawl a popular dimension and facilitates the transmission of knowledge in forms that resonate culturally and socially.

Second is the use of rhythmic stanzas and rhyme. All documented examples of Qawl employ this technique. As a means of publicly delivering knowledge, Qawl adopts strategies attentive to emotion and collective experience. Its musicality enhances memorability and echoes earlier literary traditions such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, Homeric poetry and Ugaritic texts, where rhythm supported oral transmission.

Closely connected to this is the central role of historical knowledge. History is a defining component of Qawl. Even when idealised, evocations of the past express identity, pride, community cohesion and socio-political satire. By embedding history in vernacular poetry, communities create local methods of transmitting memory from one generation to the next through public performance. Qawl has been used to record events, mark turbulent periods and commemorate political celebrations.

Finally, Qawl is defined by its public manifestation. Individuals or collectives perform as a troupe before large audiences, often in the form of poetic challenges accompanied by musical instruments. The practice promotes dialogue and acknowledges differences. Its verses may evoke tolerance and shared identity, but can also recount coercion and violence. Spontaneous, informal and emotionally charged, Qawl enables historical knowledge to be experienced collectively and retained across generations.

Through these vernacular traditions, history remains a shared and embodied practice — performed, contested and transmitted in public long before it was named as such.

Public History in Arabic 

Translating “public history” into Arabic is not straightforward. The term may be rendered as Tarikh Aam, but alternatives such as Mahali (local), Ahli (people’s) or Mujtama’i (community) capture different nuances.

The English expression combines both making history accessible and engaging in history with the public. Arabic allows more subtle distinctions between these dimensions. The verb تأريخ (to historicise) differs from the noun تاريخ (history) only by the addition of a hamza, reflecting the tension between history as inheritance and history as an active process.

If one wants to play with the Arabic language when translating the expression “public history” to reflect both its active and passive dimensions, one can simply add parentheses to the hamza, to show the possibility of both active historicization and the sharing of history in one word: 

تا)ء(ريخ 

As for the term “public” in Arabic, in the linguistic heritage of colloquial Levantine and broader Arabic-speaking lands, the term Ya ‘Ammi (literally “Oh kinsman”) is used to denote a sense of community. This also has common roots with the West Semitic “M” or “Am” (Canaanite, Hebrew, Phoenician), which denotes the idea of a group or people. As such, this mirrors some meanings associated with the term “public” in English. 

For other Arabic-speaking practitioners, the terms Ahli/Mahali (people’s/local) or Mujtama’i (community) feel more grounded in people’s everyday lives, in contrast with Āmm, which can also mean “general” and is not as commonly used in the Egyptian dialect and context, for instance. Ultimately, whether one opts for the more formal translation Tarikh Aam or decides to be more playful with the Arabic language, this article hopes to inspire more public conversations and discussions across Arabic-speaking communities. 

Why Public History? 

Many practices in the Arab world correspond to what is now termed “public history,” some dating back centuries. Using the term can help support and empower those engaged in these practices.

Public history reconnects scholars, archivists, curators, designers, podcasters, tour guides, heritage specialists and community groups who may otherwise remain separated by geography, discipline or institution. Rather than distinguishing between academic and non-academic, professional and amateur, it encourages collaboration to produce richer and more inclusive histories.

Finally, instead of distinguishing between academic and non-academic, professional and amateur, public history encourages universities, scholars and researchers to connect with local groups, communities and practitioners to produce a richer and more inclusive history.

It reminds us that history is not confined to the archive. It is shaped, performed and shared in public.

The post From Hakawati to Hashtags: Making History Public in the Arab World appeared first on Untold.

This story was produced under the Feminist Journalist Fellowship, it is part of a series highlighting the work of our fellows, developed in collaboration with UntoldMag and Noor.

LGBTQ+ individuals in Egypt face daily incidents of online violence, including threats, harassment, defamation, and blackmail. Much of this abuse comes from conservative and religious segments of society and often spills over into offline risks—or begins offline and later escalates online. 

The boundaries between digital and physical harm are increasingly blurred.

A few years ago, Noha Abeer, a pansexual Egyptian in her late twenties, became a target of online violence because of her identity and sexuality. The digital attacks soon translated into offline threats that put her life at risk.

“Yes, I was subjected to harassment, defamation, and online threats,” Noha recalls. “Between December 2021 and January 2022, people used photos and personal information from my account after I filed a harassment case against a driver,” she adds.

Targeting Nonconformist Persons in Egypt

When Noha filed the complaint, she refused to disclose her personal address and information to the prosecutor in front of the accused. The prosecutor insisted. Shortly afterward, anti-LGBTQI+ groups launched a defamation campaign against her, denying her right to exist in both digital and public spaces.

Those who are nonconformist or who simply do not obey the traditional gender divisions and social attitudes always face restrictions on their freedom, as they threaten the conservative social ethics, this applies especially to members of the LGBTQI+ community. For many like Noha, harassment flows seamlessly between online and offline spheres.

“I went to the cybercrime unit,” Noha recalls, “and the treatment was terrible. After a lot of persistence, a report was filed, but nothing happened. I couldn’t follow up because I couldn’t leave the house due to the defamation campaign in my neighborhood.”

She adds, “I was subjected to hundreds of instances of online harassment in the form of text messages and hateful, threatening comments. Sometimes I shared these messages and other times I just ignored them.” 

Noha had rejected advice about staying safe online, such as restricting messaging and commenting to friends only, not posting personal photos, and blocking abusers. She explains that she considers that all these steps are equivalent to asking, “What was the girl doing to be harassed?” or “Why did she go to that place?”, comments that blame the victim and do not solve or address the real problem.

Days before writing this article, Noha was subjected to a new smear campaign because of her opinion on a recent harassment incident that sparked public outrage in Egypt. A young woman was harassed on a public bus, and according to MadaMasr, “She said in a video she published on her social media accounts she faced three incidents of verbal harassment and assault on the road she takes to work, all by the same stranger.” 

Noha’s views were met with a hate campaign against her, with attackers sharing what they considered inappropriate photos of her taken from her personal account, including photos of her supporting LGBTQI+ people.

Noha is currently living outside Egypt, and it’s difficult for her to pursue or file reports against the ongoing abusive comments and threats she receives.

“The process of reporting harassment and online blackmail against women could be made easier and the state could allow for electronic reporting,” she explains.

LGBTQI+ Rights Rejected

In a report published in January 2025, a group of women’s rights organizations and initiatives submitted a joint submission on the status of women’s and girls’ rights in Egypt for the period 2019-2024.

The report revealed the situation of the LGBTQI+ community, from trapping and harassment to digital targeting and targeting in the public sphere, to the poor quality of medical services provided to them. According to the report, “transgender women are 50% more likely to receive harsher sentences than gay men.” Judges in ‘debauchery’ cases usually issue defendants with a single sentence for all charges.”

In January 2025, 137 countries submitted more than 370 recommendations to Egypt to improve its human rights situation. According to its response, the government decided to support 264 of the recommendations in full (77%), partially supported 16 (5%), and “noted” 62 (18%).

Some of the recommendations made to Egypt regarding improving the conditions of the LGBTQ community included Chile, Spain, Canada, and Iceland raising the issue of prosecuting and criminalizing individuals based on their sexual orientation or actual or perceived gender identity and the need for Egypt to commit to stopping forced anal examinations and amending the debauchery article used to criminalize consensual sexual conduct between adults.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) released a report in July 2025 a day before the final report of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Egypt’s human rights record, criticizing the Egyptian government’s response and commenting on the recommendations received during the review held last January.

According to EIPR: 

“This time, the Egyptian government decided not to respond to any recommendations with an overt rejection, as it had done in the three previous reviews, instead using the term ‘noted’ to refer to all the recommendations it did not accept and is therefore not committed to implementing. The government rejected any allegations of restrictions on civil society activities, any form of arbitrary detention, or requirements that limit the right to peaceful assembly or demonstration or freedom of traditional or digital media or that Egyptian laws are used to punish individuals for their sexual orientation.”

Why All These Waves of Hatred?

Mohamed Zarea, a researcher at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), believes that the recent wave of anger is not new to the LGBTQI+ community; “they suffer from hatred and discrimination from society and through media outlets indirectly controlled by security agencies.” 

“I would say that this wave of hatred has been escalating since 2014, when the community faced unprecedented arrest campaigns,” Zarea adds, “my explanation for this is related to the closure of freedom spaces that opened up after the 2011 revolution, including spaces specifically for the LGBTQI+ community and within the framework of the state’s control over the concept of morality.”

Zarea doesn’t believe that Islamist movements are solely responsible for this: “I don’t deny their hatred of the LGBTQI+ community, but they are not the only ones responsible; the state also has a very conservative regime.”

Zarea explains that Egypt has signed numerous human rights agreements, but it has not adhered to any of them. It consistently places a reservation, namely, “the stipulation of non-conflict with Islamic law”, in all the agreements it has signed (such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, CEDAW, and others). 

However, according to him, when it comes to LGBTQI+ rights, Egypt does not merely place reservations; it actively undermines any recognition of their rights. This is evident in its role within the Human Rights Council when opposing any resolution related to LGBTQI+ rights. “For example, in 2016, Egypt expressed its concern regarding the adoption of the deeply flawed draft law L.2. Rev.1, which aims to establish new rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people”, Zarea explains. 

“Egypt emphasised that the Council does not have the legislative authority to create new rights. Egypt will not recognise or cooperate with the independent expert established pursuant to L.2. Rev.1,” he adds. 

Zarea explains that Egypt consistently forms alliances to support opposing resolutions aimed at protecting the family as the fundamental unit of society. This is clearly demonstrated in its recommendations to countries that grant freedom to LGBTQ+ individuals through the UPR mechanism. 

Zarea confirms that Egypt consistently submits recommendations with almost identical wording: “Strengthen policies to support the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society.” This recommendation was submitted by Egypt during the fourth (current) cycle of the UPR to countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, and France.

This official broader pattern reflects a deeper and structural cause for the hostility faced by LGBTQI+ people like Noha in Egypt. These are not only shaped by social attitudes but also by a wider political and legal environment that leaves little room for protection. In such a context, harassment does not remain confined to one space. Hate speech, smear campaigns, and threats often move easily between social media and everyday life and the judicial system. For many LGBTQI+ people in Egypt, the result is a continuous cycle in which online and offline violence reinforce each other rather than exist separately.

The post Online and Offline Violence are Two Sides of the Same Coin for LGBTQI+ in Egypt appeared first on Untold.

One of the latest victims of deliberate delays was seven-year-old Anwar Al-Ashi, who died on 4 February 2026 in his family’s tent due to an acute kidney infection.

Months before, on 18 September 2025, little Jana Ayyad also died awaiting evacuation. Having suffered severe malnutrition, she became a symbol of the starvation that is decimating Palestinian civilians in Gaza. “Jana was supposed to be evacuated outside of the strip a year before, but the COGAT prevented it”, according to Patrick Münz, an emergency response leader conducting evacuations in warzones. 

COGAT is the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, an Israeli unit of the Israeli military responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs and one of the organizations enforcing the illegal siege on Gaza.

Münz says that after receiving messages from colleagues that Jana was still in Gaza, he contacted the WHO. Whilst initially Israel approved the mission, and they were able to get both Jana and her mother out of the North, on the second stage of the journey, they rejected exit permissions for the mother. “It is unthinkable for a 7-year-old child who needs intensive care to be allowed to leave without their caregiver”, Münz explains. 

Münz, who spent 7 months on the ground in Gaza, estimates that 30%-40% of people treated in mass casualty events in Gaza were children under 12. Numbers vary, but UNICEF estimates that 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza. 

With the healthcare infrastructure decimated, Münz says, even before the March 2025 aid blockade, the conditions were already critical. “I can’t imagine how people managed to get on. There are thousands of cases similar to Jana’s where imminent death is very likely”. 

Evacuations Denied

Five-year-old Mira suffered severe injuries from being shot in the head. She requires evacuation to receive specialist medical care. Yet, the case is “almost impossible to move forward”, according to Mimi Syed, an emergency doctor who went to Gaza in December and August of 2024 on humanitarian missions. 

“She gets recurring infections as a result of her trauma, and it is difficult and dangerous for her parents to take her to the hospital for treatment, which makes the recovery process harder”, Syed explains. She has been trying to evacuate Mira with little success as no country has been willing to help the family. Her mother has also suffered a traumatic amputation. “The father will definitely not be allowed to exit as an able-bodied male”, Syed adds.

Before its closure in 2024, the Rafah crossing saw a few managing to evacuate to Egypt after paying large sums of money to get “visas”. The conditions under which they managed to reach Egypt could be considered as borderline trafficking, according to Münz, who says that these “evacuations” were handled by shady Egyptian organisations, possibly affiliated with the military. 

According to data collected from the WHO, since October 2023, 7,672 patients have been evacuated from Gaza, including 5,332 children. The majority of whom were evacuated between January and March 2025, in the first ceasefire period. However, with the resumption of hostilities between March and September 2025, only 534 patients were let out. 

Medical evacuations begin with the evaluation of the patient by doctors at the hospital, who then submit their case to a referral system. Each case is passed through the internal referral committee of the Gaza Ministry of Health. Then the approved patients’ list will be shared with the WHO, and the organisation will be responsible for finding a hosting country and liaising with the Cogat to ultimately allow exit. 

Additionally, a network of a few NGOs on the ground and abroad that cooperate with the WHO is tasked with supporting evacuees by assisting in logistics, finding hosts, and advocating for their needs. 

Münz explains that most evacuations were taking place from the North to the South of the strip, even though the very few facilities operating in the South were barely equipped, and the living conditions were no better. He also spoke of major delays. “When a mission is approved, we get allocated a date and hand over the data of all the patients and people involved. We get a route by the Israeli army. Yet, they often let us wait for several hours at their checkpoint. The checkpoint has specific opening times, so you have a cut-off time where you need to cancel the mission,” Münz adds. 

Münz estimates that  80% – 90% of evacuees were denied by the Israeli army or were first approved and then denied exit. According to the WHO, 900 patients have already died awaiting evacuation as of 2025. By February 2026, this number had climbed to 1,286 people. “They rarely even let children, or other people who are clearly not a threat, out, even though it would be straightforward to coordinate with humanitarians on the ground”, says Münz. 

According to the WHO, the top destinations for medical evacuations since 2023 were Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and EU countries. However, the international response has not matched the severity of the situation. Syed explains that a reason delaying life-saving evacuations is that there are not enough countries that would accept patients from Gaza. “More need to step up, especially when it comes to children”. 

Cruel Barriers  

Despite the international community’s lukewarm response and deliberate visa bans from countries like the US, the main stumbling block is Israeli authorities. 

“Nobody is really doing enough, but unnecessarily cruel barriers imposed by Israel is the biggest impediment”, says Syed, explaining that the best and most ethical solution, as also advocated by the WHO, would be to allow patients to evacuate to the West Bank, where they would be able to get treatment by Palestinian doctors, in their own language and country.  

In September 2025, several European countries called for Israel to establish a humanitarian corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, stating that they would fund the whole process so patients can receive treatment in East Jerusalem. The call was ignored, as not only did Israel refuse this arrangement, but it has also made plans to deport sick patients back to Gaza.

Humanitarians also struggle to create locally-led structures, and evacuations are still dependent on international organisations, says Münz. 

Münz adds that local staff are being intimidated, targeted, and in danger of indefinite detention. Once, whilst accompanying a convoy, he witnessed an incident where a local Palestinian UN driver leading a convoy carrying supplies for a polio vaccination campaign had to stop at a checkpoint and was instructed not to leave the car, because if taken away by the Israeli soldiers, he would be at high risk of being forcibly disappeared. The operation was delayed until the soldiers gave up. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) had to suspend evacuations in 2024 because its drivers were being constantly attacked. “We tried to take PRCS under our wing because these missions must be locally-led. We started chaperoning them in missions until PRCS was able to lead on its own again. This is a little success, but still difficult”, said Münz.

Coordination between international staff and their local colleagues is challenging. Münz says that he has struggled with deconflicting logistics for local staff. He explains that whilst his movements were all coordinated with Israeli army and the house and vehicles foreign humanitarians used were deconflicted, Palestinian staff are not allowed to use this system, even if they work with international organisations. 

Münz explains, “These people are part of our team, and I cannot deconflict their movements because they are Palestinians. This is a blatant double standard”. In practice, it meant that local staff had to take long journeys on foot from their tents to the accommodation of the international staff to move together to their mission. 

Evacuations are also extremely difficult due to ongoing massacres. Münz says that convoys were often held because the Israeli army didn’t want them to go through the checkpoint, which Münz describes as a ‘kill zone’ where they would witness the aftermath of their operations. 

Münz also witnessed several incidents where people were killed by mortars close to their convoy. “Once, we waited at the holding point, and a man in a wheelchair carried by some other men passed us. Two hours later, we saw that the empty wheelchair had been blown up by a mortar. People like us who have experience in the field and know exactly what mortar holes look like could tell what happened”. 

This reality was especially acute in February 2024 when Al Nasser and Al Amal hospitals in Khan Younis were besieged. Before Israel forcibly emptied the hospitals in March 2024, an evacuation was approved for the PRCS staff stuck in the Al-Amal hospital after UN pressure. Münz says that in the first attempt, the WHO-led convoy was followed by tanks and was stopped. 

While the convoy was about 800 metres away from the medics, they were taken at gunpoint, and several soldiers and tanks surrounded them. “They told us they cannot let us proceed due to ongoing combat. That was clearly a lie, because I know how battle sounds, even from a great distance. It was completely silent, even though we were so close. So it was very obvious that they just didn’t want to let us go there because we would see the massacre that they had committed”. 

Similar incidents happened later on in that month as humanitarians tried to evacuate civilians from Al-Amal. OCHA issued a statement vindicating the account that Israel deliberately impeded the evacuation convoy despite previous agreements. “Despite prior coordination with the Israeli side, the Israeli forces blocked the WHO-led convoy the moment it left the hospital. The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and stripped all paramedics of their clothes. Three PRCS paramedics were subsequently detained”, reads the statement. 

Foreign aid staff are subjected to censorship and refusal of re-admission if they speak out. Syed says that she was denied on a third medical mission in 2025. No reason was given, but she could speculate that it is because she was vocal about her experiences in Al-Amal and Al-Nasser hospitals. Syed adds that there are higher chances of getting permission to enter if going for the first time. 

In her convoy, she and the other doctor, who had also been there, got denied; the nurse who got approved had never been. Münz also confirms that there are high denial rates of humanitarians: “Those who engaged in advocacy or testified to what they saw in Gaza were not allowed in again”.

Rising Death Toll

Since the ceasefire, the death toll continues to rise, and whilst some are anticipating returning to their homes, others with life-threatening conditions are still in need of finding appropriate care elsewhere. 

When asked whether, based on their experience, they believe that this is a systematic approach, both Syed and Münz agree that there is evidence to suggest deliberation in the way the Israeli army addresses evacuations. Syed points to government officials in Israel who have made well-documented, corrosive statements. “These are orders coming from the very top, coupled with no accountability for individual commanders”, says Syed.  

Münz says that the Israeli army always justifies the refusal or delay of exit with the same standard answer, which is citing security reasons or ongoing military operations. “The fact that evacuations are so hard to carry out despite all our efforts and readiness is clearly a political will”. He adds, “We have situations where children need immediate surgery to stop internal bleeding from shrapnel wounds, while all surgery rooms are full with more acute cases given a higher priority due to survival likelihood. So, we are forced to see a child bleed to death and at the same time have a fully-equipped ambulance that could be fetched, when the next Israeli hospital that could save their life is only 30 minutes away. Approving a mission like this is impossible, and this is by design”.  

Evacuations, however, are not a secure option; they are rather a last resort. One of the main fears is whether Palestinians will be able to return from exile. WHO states that “The medical evacuation process takes place with the understanding by all parties and authorities that they can return to the Gaza Strip upon completion of their medical treatment. This is clearly stated in the official consent form, which patients sign”. However, for those who left in different ways, for example, through the Rafah border, uncertainty over their future reigns, and with the limited mandate of UNRWA, protracted displacement is a real threat.  

Münz also notes that “the Israeli army had terms to allow this process that have nothing to do with any dignity for the people”. They were not allowed to take much with them other than a small backpack and often stripped of valuable possessions such as wedding bands. “It was very obvious for all of us that these people would likely never return”, says Münz. 

Evacuations have also been weaponised. It was recently revealed that secret Israeli charter flights quietly transporting Palestinians out of Gaza, often without passengers knowing their destination, are raising fears of forced transfer disguised as humanitarian evacuation.

The number of those needing evacuations is still high. As many as 10,000 people are applying to leave due to deteriorating living conditions. Syed says, “Israel is obviously creating all of these problems. Everyone else is very reluctant to help, and those who suffer are the people in Gaza”.

The post Trapping Dying Children: How Israel is Still Blocking Medical Evacuations from Gaza appeared first on Untold.

Baraka Thomas Mbalakai, 53, is the farm’s namesake––his father established this farm more than four decades ago. At present, they hire day labourers to pick ripe berries every couple of weeks during the harvest season, which runs roughly from June to October or November in East Africa.

There can be a shortage of labor at times during harvest season, he explains, since the cherries all ripen around the same time. Laizer and the other dozen or so women and an adolescent boy at Baraka Farm work from dawn to dusk––nearly 12 hours––and are paid TSh7,500 (~$3USD) a day.

Their remarkably low wages make for a heady contrast to Tanzanian peabody coffee priced at $21.99 per 12 ounce (340 gram) packet in Brooklyn, New York, or a double cappuccino containing roughly 20 grams of coffee going for at least $6 at most third-wave coffee shops in North America.

A Heavy Colonial Heritage

Ujamaa, meaning ‘fraternity’ in Kiswahili––Tanzania’s national language––was the socialist ideology that founding president Julius Nyerere adopted for his country upon independence from the British colonial administration in 1961.

Scholars have described Ujamaa as ‘the most successful [post-colonial] attempt to dismantle the structure of indirect rule; while making strides in social development such as extending life expectancy, had certain catastrophic economic consequences such as declines in food production.

While the baseline of state control of agricultural industries (which accounts for more than a quarter of Tanzania’s GDP, employing the vast majority of the population) finds its roots in colonial control, state interventions continued melding the coffee industry’s  trajectory under the Ujamaa policy’s ‘cooperative economics.’

According to Yustina Samwel Komba, a historian who completed a PhD at Stellenbosch University on the socio-economic history of coffee production in Tanzania, the 1930s  colonial administration promoted cooperative societies under the claimed objective of protecting African coffee growers from exploitation by private middleman traders.

However, Komba indicates how cooperatives were wielded more as a tool of colonial governance rather than a mechanism for producer protection: enabling the state to discipline African producers, regulating production and quality, controlling marketing channels, and securing export revenues.

Rather than dismantling exploitative relations, the colonial cooperative system reconfigured them under bureaucratic state control. In the post-colonial period, these structures inherited and intensified: under Ujamaa, cooperative societies functioned even more explicitly as instruments of state monopoly over coffee production and sales.

Brad Weiss, an associate professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary, argues that “The black market in coffee, then, is most effective in taking advantage of the need for ready cash.”

“Those who have access to cash are able to purchase the prospective coffee harvests of their clients who cannot wait for the state’s payments. In this way, control of the annual procedures (and proceeds) of coffee cultivation is cut short in favour of the immediate requirement of money,” he writes.

Only those like Laizer and her colleagues, who effectively hold no buying power, would take on temporary yet critical roles of seasonal coffee cherry picking.

The Birthplace of Coffee

Although Mbalaki is Maasai––one of the most internationally renowned pastoral communities from the African continent–– he has shifted from livestock herding to coffee farming, growing arabica coffee across 2 acres. He has a small green bean processing and roasting facility at his home, is in the process of building a brick and mortar shop, and intends on passing his farm and shop down to his children and grandchildren.

This part of the world is the birthplace of coffee. Around 850CE, a young Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed how his flock became extra sprightly after chewing on the crop. Somali merchants transported coffee east across the Gulf of Aden, where it became a cornerstone drink in Yemeni culture, before spreading throughout West Asia and beyond.

In the east, the bustling, coastal city of Dar es Salaam––Tanzania’s financial hub and largest city in East Africa by population with nearly 9 million people––is in its nascence of coffee drinking culture. Why is it that Tanzanians—the ones who grow the beans (which are mostly exported)––drink so little coffee themselves?

33-year-old Evance Malleo is committed to changing this. The winner of the national 2024 Kahawa Festival (meaning ‘coffee’ in Kiswahili), he is also the founder of Kahawa Studio Hub, an independent coffee shop in coastal Dar es Salaam. The son of coffee farmers from the Kilimanjaro area, he has labored in coffee fields since he could walk.

Yet his parents, like most East African farmers, do not drink coffee themselves, preferring chai. “Why is this the case,” says Malleo, “When Tanzania produces some of the best coffee in the world?”

Together with his wife, Hilda, they believe that by slowly introducing locals to the art of coffee to their community, they can not only bridge the extant cultural gap between foreigners and locals, but also inject orders of magnitude more income into the Tanzanian economy––upwards of 88%, according to Utengule Roasters, which has been roasting for two decades, and growing coffee since the early 20th century.

Wishful Thinking

According to the Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB), which oversees the regulation (e.g. compliance and quality control) of the nation’s coffee production, 70,000-80,000 tons of green beans are produced annually, with local consumption averaging a mere 3% of total production.

Primus Kimaryo, the director general of TCB, is an agricultural economist and has been involved with the board since 1999. Although Tanzania contributes less than 1% of the world’s coffee, the beans are of exceptional quality, mostly exported to Japan and Europe. “We want to increase production from 1.3-1.4 million bags (60kg each) to 5 million over the next 5 years,” he says on behalf of the TCB. They have embarked on their fourth year of arabica seedlings distribution to Tanzanian coffee farmers (400,000 smallholders on plots averaging 1-2 hectares comprise 95% of Tanzanian growers) to help achieve this mission, providing 20 million seedlings.

“Consumption is directly linked to income and livelihood,” he continues. If Tanzania’s standard of living can be boosted, the culture of coffee drinking may likely also grow, Kimaryo believes.

“But besides promoting mainstream coffee consumption, we are also working to expand into niche markets such as fairtrade, organic, rainforest friendly in alignment with Voluntary Sustainability Standards”, Kimaryo explains.

Kimaryo’s optimistic beliefs that simply increasing coffee consumption may be a marker of a more equitable Tanzanian economy, hides the unavoidable colonial shadows behind coffee making that trajectory anything but straightforward.

“Colonialism was as much about making the centre as it was about making the periphery,” Weiss quotes anthropologist John Comaroff, “Just as Haya (a Bantu ethnic group in northwestern Tanzania) farming communities use coffee to negotiate their local position in a global economy in ways that have been constrained, but never simply determined, by the forces of the global market, so, too has the presence of coffee.”

Weiss writes about how colonial and neo-colonial relations in Tanzania are inextricably intertwined. “Coffee is the original therapy for the micro-management of bourgeois personality,” he argues. “Coffee further permits these attitudes, motivations, and dispositions to be objectified in the capitalist reconstruction of time, as ‘coffee breaks’ become means of temporal reckoning that are routinized in labor practices.”

“Using coffee to mark and make time in this way thereby fulfils a capitalist fantasy, providing a respite from work undertaken for the sake of work itself––and thus the direct conversation of ‘leisure’ into ‘productivity’––made possible through the medium of a highly desired, commodified stimulant,” Weiss continues.

Deforestation, Climate Crisis, and Tariffs

The messiness of US tariffs has complicated business and logistics. Coffee from Brazil, constituting 30% of the global market, was being tariffed at 50% by the United States in July 2025, which ground US purchases of Brazilian coffee to a halt.

Other coffee buyers, notably China, seized this opportunity. “This forces the bags of coffee to move via different routes,” Kimaryo explains. “We’re going to see a lot of side selling, smuggling. Brazilian coffee might be rebranded as Peruvian coffee when it’s still from Brazil, just to navigate the new constraints.”

Meanwhile, erratic rainfall patterns and temperature from rapidly accelerating climate change impacts coffee shrubs particularly hard. As the most traded commodity on earth, and a major export cash crop for Tanzania, an understanding of how to cope with drought and warming trends will be critical to sustaining production.

Climate change has also heralded an onset of higher infestation rates of snails and borer pests.

And with growing demand for coffee, both locally and globally, the need for land increases. The result is that across the continent, human activities––such as coffee cultivation––are driving the decline of forests, which in turn catalyze damages to ecosystem services and subsequent economic and social benefits from the environment, particularly for low-income communities.

The post From Tanzanian Farms to Trendy Cafés: The Unequal Cost of Coffee – A Photo Story appeared first on Untold.

Two days later, on 13 February, and after weeks of combat which saw tens of thousands killed, The Red Army captured Budapest.

Hungary’s capital had been completely destroyed by war. For most historians, the episode is another tragic chapter in the catastrophic endgame of the Second World War. However, In the post war period, the siege of Budapest became a staple of far-right mythology in Europe. In the 1990s, this breakout attempt by the last remaining Nazi forces in the city became known as the “Day of Honour” to Hungarian neo-Nazis who sought to glorify the fallen soldiers of the Reich. 

The “Day of Honour” 

Every year the “Day of Honour” draws networks of extremists from across the continent. Countries such as Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia and beyond, have all had some of their most violent and radical far-right groups attend this demonstration, making it one of the most persistent and internationally connected manifestations of European far-right mobilisation in the post-Cold War era.

The day has also grown in notoriety over the years. Not merely for the quantity of participants but for the way it functions simultaneously as a commemoration and a networking event for extremists. In 2025, journalists estimated that thousands participated in a memorial hike from Buda castle. These types of events take place throughout the days leading up to the “Day of Honour” demonstration.

Attendance includes groups like Blood&Honour and Combat 18, who see the failed 1945 breakout as a foundational myth and as a last defence of western civilisation against the spectre of communism and Soviet domination. This narrative is central to transnational far-right identity and is widely considered an act of historical revisionism that is used by these radical groups to air their political grievances.

An International Event

The first “Day of Honour” rally was organised in 1997 by the Hungarian National Front. It attracted around 150 participants, mostly from Hungary. By 2003 the event had grown and the international neo-Nazi group Blood & Honour took over the organisational duties. This period saw the event begin to stabilize and expand. Blood & Honour was officially banned in Hungary in 2004 but the group’s symbolism, such as the strange, malshaped swastika they are associated with, continues to be present at the rally.

In recent years, Legio Hungaria have taken a leading role in organising the event. Founded in 2018, it describes itself as a “national resistance movement” dedicated to preserving what it describes as Hungary’s ethnic and cultural integrity. Legio Hungaria would be considered to be on the more extreme end of Hungary’s far right, openly venerating historical fascist figures, engaging in paramilitary-style activism, and maintaining ties to transnational neo-Nazi networks such as The Nordic Resistance Movement and Hammerskins. 

Legio Hungaria transformed the “Day Of Honour” into the large international event it is today. They also navigated legal restrictions around hosting an open neo-Nazi demo through rebranding certain aspects of the event such as hosting “memorial hikes”. Beyond the march itself, Legio Hungaria has been involved in street mobilisations, intimidation campaigns and has been central in the broader infrastructure of Hungary’s far right.

The estimated 4,000 participants who took part in the 2025 “memorial hike” procession through Budapest, were accompanied by banners, emblems and speeches. One attendee, identified only as Zsolt, told AFP reporters at the time that he came “to honour the heroes… the real Hungarians who defended the city.”

That framing of “heroes” resisting an existential threat is central to the symbolic logic of the event. To many of the far-right participants it is a rare space where their worldview is legitimated and supported. 

State Sponsorship

The international dimension of the Day of Honour underscores this. Unlike far-right demonstrations that remain largely national and insulated, the Budapest gathering draws organisers and attendees from multiple European countries year after year. This is what makes the event more than just a commemoration, but a mass-networking event for Europe’s neo-Nazi scene.

In March 2024, MEPs Daniel Freund and Terry Reintke submitted a written question to the European Commission noting that “neo-Nazi marches glorifying National Socialism” are held annually in Budapest and that thousands travel from all over Europe to take part. They noted that swastikas and other Nazi symbols are openly worn. The question further raised concern over alleged Hungarian state sponsorship of the event through Government ministries and the Military History Museum, which provides space and memorabilia.

That the question had to be asked at the level of the European Parliament speaks to a broader tension in how the event is perceived versus how it is policed. Hungarian authorities have periodically attempted to ban or restrict gatherings connected to the “Day of Honour”. In 2022 the Supreme Court upheld a police ban on that year’s neo-Nazi parade, citing concerns that it could inspire extremism and harm public order. 

Nevertheless, unauthorized marches continued to take place despite the ban. Hungary’s government, who have openly been criticised for far-right and authoritarian tendencies, have not seemed very serious about enforcing the ban.

Police responses during the event window tend to be heavy but controlled. At a press briefing, officials reported increased controls across central Budapest including surveillance of nightclubs frequented by known extremists, checks on underpasses and cooperation with foreign police forces following the arrests of foreign nationals connected to prior disturbances. It is worth noting that these measures also apply to the many anti-fascist groups who come from across Europe to demonstrate against the event. 

In fact, it seems to be more common for counter protesting groups to be stopped on the Hungarian border and denied entry than it is for far-right groups. In 2024, authorities arrested more than 300 individuals in connection with extremist affiliations and weapons offences. This included both “Day of Honour” participants and anti-fascist counter protestors.

Unequal Laws

Police decline to intervene consistently against neo-Nazi symbolism at the march even as they enforce laws banning uniformed protest or totalitarian symbols. This uneven enforcement has . drawn criticism from scholars and civil society

The “Day of Honour” march has provoked resistance, more often from the left than the centre. The most notable moment of resistance, and one which drew international attention to the event, occurred in 2023 when clashes took place across Budapest between far-left and far-right activists. 

Many of these activists had come from across Europe, and the level of violence shocked many in Hungary. A brutal video surfaced from CCTV footage showing a member of Legio Hungaria being viciously beaten by a gang of masked anti-fascists. The incident drew widespread condemnation from many centrist and right-wing commentators, with many on the left claiming that it was a necessary act to counter neo-Nazi extremists. 

The Hungarian authorities launched an international manhunt for the anti-fascists involved and many had to go into hiding across Europe as police forces from Germany, France and Italy assisted the Hungarian police in finding the perpetrators. 

The whole incident became known as the “Budapest Affair” and lasted for over two years, with trials still ongoing. 

German activist Maja T face a controversial trial in Hungary. The nonbinary anti-fascist activist was alleged to have been involved in the violence and was facing 24 years in prison in Hungary. On 4 February 2026, Maja was sentenced to eight years in prison, a verdict that can still be appealed. Whilst people like Maja would have known the risks involved with any sort of violent direct action, a multiple year sentence for beating someone seems wildly disproportionate. 

Many activists across Europe are now facing extradition to Hungary for their role in the affair. 

One of the most high-profile figures to emerge from the aftermath of the 2023 clashes was Ilaria Salis, an Italian anti-fascist activist arrested in Budapest and accused of participating in assaults linked to the “Day of Honour”. Her prison conditions drew international attention after images showing her being brought to court handcuffed and shackled prompted criticism from Italian politicians, human rights groups, and the European Parliament over Hungary’s pre-trial detention conditions. 

Salis was held for more than a year before being released in 2024 after winning a seat in the European Parliament which granted her parliamentary immunity and forced Hungarian authorities to suspend proceedings. Hungary is still seeking to extradite her for trial.

A Growing Trend

The “Day of Honour” does not exist in isolation. It sits within an ecosystem of increasing far-right politics that has flourished across Hungary under the governance of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. 

The official state narrative on WWII in Hungary has shifted over time. There is more emphasis put on the Hungarian people suffering at the hands of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, whereas traditionally the Nazis were generally accepted as the main aggressors and perpetrators of that conflict. This new emphasis helps to create a discursive space within which the far right’s appropriation of history can find liminal legitimacy. 

It is worth noting that the context in which this narrative has grown is largely down to Hungary being under the thumb of a harsh Communist regime up until the late 1980s. 

The memories of that period’s terror are still fresh in the minds of many, whilst the horrors inflicted by the Nazis have been forgotten by many. 

The “Day of Honour” is an interesting case study in how far-right politics now operates across borders and political systems. Global trends are seeing a growing normalisation of far-right events and symbolism, including many that would have been unthinkable in the post WWII era up until now. 

While across the pond, the US American far right has, particularly under Donald Trump, tended toward mass spectacle, personality-driven mobilisation and rapid cycles of escalation and collapse, its European counterparts have often pursued a slower and more institutional strategy. 

The Budapest march exemplifies this divergence. It is not designed to win elections or dominate headlines but to gradually build networks and normalise extremist talking points. As far-right parties gain parliamentary footholds across the western world and extremist subcultures continue to organise transnationally, the “Day of Honour” illustrates how radicalism no longer depends on sudden breakthroughs or charismatic leaders to endure.

The post Inside Europe’s Largest Neo-Nazi Gathering: The Quiet Normalisation of Fascism appeared first on Untold.